Broken Trinity: A Medic's Tale
by leahhlee
Summary: Captured at Braxis, Demeter finds herself in the middle of the Protoss Conclave and the Zerg's spawning pool, all the while bearing the UED's EMT insignia. Treason falls like leaves around her & the only force she is attracted to isn't even human. ZerOC-lime
1. 01 Breaking the Blockade

09:45 AM September 3rd  
Just outside sub-Center Camp 4, Braxis

Demeter sucked in a tentative breath and tried to winch the knot out of her shoulders. Presently, she was at attention with her new Snapdragon Zipper 12 rifle clutched to her chest, ready to be picked up by the assigned dropship; she could see the red dome of the operations bay—her back was facing the west side of the starport deploy station—but it was quickly fading in the fog. The rest of her squadron was coming into the hangar now, all of them filing silently into rows. They were opening their stim packs as they lined up; her fire team was just assembling behind her, all of the men chattering casually to try to banish the tension.

The UED was holding a blockade over the planet Braxis in efforts to isolate this world for excavation and consolidation of the outlying Dominion colonies. The blockade was loosely held and poorly supplied: this starport was weak and outdated—none of the battlecruisers had Yamato turrets—in addition to supply lines being spotty at best. Not every soldier was guaranteed a meal. Demeter was, but that was because she was the highest ranked medic in the entire battalion…and it helped to be a little more than personal with the Vice-Admiral.

The field commander marched through the blast doors of the west wing, startling the high-strung men nearby. His boot had barely hit the ground before an order undulated from his lips. "Alright, girl scouts, it's that time already! Lock and load!"

She popped the tail out and back in to her rifle and heard the satisfying click and hum that said it was fully charged. The men around her skinned their sleeves up and began to tear at the medical packets, slapping patches on their arms and thrusting needles into their shoulders. Demeter watched the man on her left as his patch glowed briefly before returning to its fabric texture; the adjacent veins had lifted to the surface in a throbbing spider web pulsating with a rush of blood. A bruise began to spread there, and the man sighed, his eyes rolling back into his head contentedly.

"God, that is so bad for you," she murmured. She said it quiet enough for it not to be heard, but secretly intended for him to catch wind…which he did.

"Honey, I ain't gonna be around much longer the way this blockade's going," he said with a wicked grin as he smacked a second and third patch on. "Even for you, sugar."

"If you're so opposed to the malaise of nitrus patches, then try this." The commander hulked over her and thrust a tube of glowing blue fluid under her nose. "Know what this is?"

She knew very well what it was: cabersol. Cabersol had no long-term effects and it could work wonders on the human corpus in seconds. She'd observed muscles cell reactions to mere molecules of the stuff and seriously believed she had witnessed miracles. It was quite literally liquid energy.

"Please, Commander," she sighed, winking. "Besides, I'm a medic."

"It'll keep you on your toes, Captain. I need you running hot so you can save my boys."

The man to his left suddenly popped to his feet with an insulted grimace. "Commander, that's Captain Demeter Starling there. She ain't lost more n' seventeen men in one of her missions. People signed up for this just 'cuz of her." He nodded respectfully in her direction.

"Boy, I'm her Commander! I know damn well who she is! You just sit down and shut up 'till I make you move your ass out into the flames, okay?"

He backed away meekly. Demeter took the cabersol syringe and put it in her left thigh pouch. "I'm running hot already. I'll save it for later so I can 'save your boys', Commander."

"Adrenaline ain't got nothing on cabersol, hon. But that's all I'm going to say." The commander blew his whistle once and began to belt out instructions to the rest of the soldiers. "Alright! Here we go! Your objective, as you know, is to hold the blockade. We have several bunkers out for Marines and Firebats. We have two medics that will be with the spare troops at one of the energy couplings. Your incentive to fight is to not die."

They all laughed, save Demeter. Of course, they were all high, save Demeter.

"Toes, boys!"

Everyone cheered loudly. "Hoo-rah!"

She ushered her team of spare men to a dropship marked 'UED TRANSPORT 2556-532-01' and clipped her wrist into the strap near the cockpit. The woman at the throttle smiled weakly. "Let's get this show on the road, boys!"

As the dropship lifted off, she surveyed her team. She had about eighteen men to keep track of, all of which were Marines. They were reapplying their armor over their glowing stim patches. They flew over yards and yards of missile turrets and watched as other shuttles unloaded their stash of soldiers, who then scrambled into bunkers. Demeter couldn't feel an ounce of adrenaline in her blood when the transport circled low, and released the exit plane.

They would be occupying a makeshift no-man's land. A jagged trench was cut into the tiling of the paved floor; the rest of the space was cluttered with crunched up metal and deactivated floor guns. The wiring systems had either shorted out or been ripped in places from previous warfare so that the wires stuck out like fried grass. It was damp from a brief acidic rainstorm earlier, leaving the area coated in a limp, retreating fog.

The men were almost lackadaisical as they plopped into position. They waited in tentative silence for a long while. She patrolled the trench and tried to memorize it, yet she was too hung up on listening to the buzzing line between her and HQ. Suddenly, she felt the itching need to sneeze when the order came: "Captain Starling! Mobilize! Four zealot squads and twelve dragoons plus a team of Protoss scouts attacking your sector! The turrets won't hold against the ground troops!"

'_Another successful mission. Come on, Demeter. You got this_.'

"Hoo-rah!" she yelled loudly, and the men snapped upright excitedly, echoing her cry with their own.

"Zealots and Protoss dragoons are attacking the turrets up ahead! Move out and take them down! Go!"

Men, exhaling vile oaths in clouds of condensation, began shambling over the trench wall. She heard them cheer to themselves as the low rumble of the dropship sounded in the distance. She could hear the unfamiliar sounds of alien fire as well as the battle cries of her company calling to her like—

Her instincts kicked in. She vaulted over the side of trench in silence, just as her comrades had done. There was too much visual euphoria to be filling it with screams. The rotating towers of missile turrets turned eerily on the horizon line and a mist was rising from the camp as the earth gave way to marines' burrowing holes. This was only her second Braxis mission, and it was just as exhilarating as the first. She found herself sprinting, running aimlessly after the men in front of her—who were a good fifty yards ahead—with her gun plugged into her shoulder. The rifle was one of the bigger side-arms assigned to medics, and now, as she ran behind her squad as was protocol for the support units, she realized exactly how badly they needed her. Her sprint was softening into a jog as she came within twenty yards.

The lines began to separate as the soldiers who had squandered their ammo pulled out knives and stim-patches and surged forward. The sharpshooters, who had taken only enough steroids to sustain them through the full sprint from the trench, had dropped to one-knee and starting picking off the clumps of marines that were rising from bunkers in the ground. No one was down yet. She looked for UED goliaths, but there were none in sight. Maybe that's how the Protoss got through.

A few of the men's armor had let a few shots through, and she quickly repaired to their side to treat the wounds. After a quick wave from her glowing arm attachment and a handful of metal putty to patch the holes, they were back in action, surging forth with the rest of their brethren towards the center of the clouds.

Then she did something unexpected for a medic. She plugged the butt of her Snapdragon into her shoulder and screwed the scope into her eye. She waited for her vision to adjust to the macro-focus, and then pointed the crosshair on a freshly shielded dragoon. Her tongue curled around her lip as she moved the nose over the slightest bit after feeling the direction of the wind. She squeezed.

The tip of her rifle gave birth to a smooth column of laser-blue light. The gun kicked lightly against her shoulder, and she watched the shield sizzle away though her scope. The men nearby were in such a fury that they barely noticed. Wiping the blood and guts from their face, they tore into the metallic side of another wounded dragoon.

The first lines began dissolving into the first layer of cloud falling past the tiling. She watched as spire from an old tower gun fell out of the shroud and burst open on the ground. The snipers were mobilizing and started towards the mist. She followed suit.

The fog embraced her in obscurity. She fired a shot into the distance. She heard the crack as it was refracted into the ground, and the noise sculpted out her environment for her echolocation senor in her helmet; she was entering newly created no-man's land. She could hear the eerie crashes of dragoon fire in the distance, hear the grinding sound of mineral harvesting not to far away, hear the soft curls of smoke drifting away in the breeze. Everything was immensely clear to her. She trotted on through the fog, at last emerging from the ring and stepping into Protoss fire.

She winced as the zealot blade buried itself in her stomach. The thing's emotionless face glittered blankly as its arm pulled back to stab her again. Before she could register the pain, it was tackled and brutally ripped to shred by a pair of Marines in a cabersol-induced frenzy. Her healer's arm was already working on her wound, knitting the flesh and tissue back together, as she clutched her gut, the pain winking away in stars at the corners of her eyes.

As the marines moved on, she looked down at the fallen Protoss laying at her feet. She heard it whimper faintly before it stilled permanently. A sickness pervaded her as a tingling energy flowed passed her, the zealot's psi mixing lightly with her mind as it floated away into the black. She sneezed roughly, and then collected her wits.

Terran no-man's land was the cradle of chaos. Dirt was exploding around her, the spray of water and blood sizzling away in the laser shots riddling the earth, making a cruel harmony to the screams of the frenzied men. Soldiers with needles jutting out of their arms were careening about the air, calling down curses in wordless roars of agony. The Protoss dragoons and zealots were moving about, but luckily their numbers were dwindling.

She flipped her med visor down on her helmet. All men were reporting strong heartbeats and active battle status. She checked armor levels. Several were less than full, but not because they'd been injured, but probably because they needed more skin to apply those devilish stimulant patches. In that case, she could carry on fighting.

She stopped where she was and dropped to her knees. She loaded a Snapdragon charge to her rifle and, aiming at the exhaust vent of a dragoon station about 200 yards off to the left, let out a roiling black charge of negative energy. It entered the pipe with a clanging snarl before detonating inside, spraying acid and used materials all over the probes rushing to repair it. A wave of sizzling fluid crashed over the turret belching missiles like bubbles and the thing exploded loudly. The supply depots were disintegrating rapidly; black smoke burst forth from the ground, smoking corpses tumbling out of the pit like leaves off a tree.

She snapped another Snapdragon charge in place before shuffling over a rock to aim for the shuttle just behind the depots. She released the charge and the ship evaporated in a firestorm of shrapnel melted fluid. Three men then overcame the zealots with hand knives, a fresh set of steroids funneling drugs into their shoulders.

She was suddenly thrown from the rock as shrapnel collided with her lower jaw from the other side of the rock. Demeter was barely conscious; her instinct was acting instead of her waking self, and her instinct had no sense of direction. She stalled only for a second, then vaulted over a pile of rusted metal as an alert showed up on her med visor. She disarmed her Snapdragon and turned on the laser fire function before starting in the direction of alarm.

She turned left at a crossroads and found herself in a metal forest of wind turbines. It was significantly darker under here, but she could see the group of five soldiers to the northeast as they waved enthusiastically. She popped her healing function on with a flick of her wrist. Instantly, her hand warmed in the healing light and she felt the muscles in her hand relax. The corporal in charge, a marine with bad five o'clock shadow, saluted her as she skidded to her knees next to the wounded marine. She smiled brightly. "Where does it hurt?"

This soldier was pretty well shot up. With her other hand, she snapped a magnet into her palm and waved it over the wounds. It immediately stuck to his armor and made a series of clicking noises as bullets raced out of their sockets. She turned off the electricity and tore the plate away, scattering bullets across the ground, before playing the curative light of her medical accessory over the holes. His heart rate slowly rose to normal, and, though his armor index was still low, his medical computer signed him on as 'Active'. She smeared the metal putty over the holes and it sank in with a sizzle. Fresh armor rose from the holes, and she wiped off the excess. "Might not match the rest of your getup, but it should keep you safe."

"Thank you!" they all uttered graciously.

"No problem, boys," she said with a flirty wink. "Now, no slacking off! Stay frosty and keep up the good work!"

"You got it!"

Before she had time to wave them goodbye, a second alert flickered up on her visor. She took off in the direction of a group of injured troops. They were somewhere in the fog; four of them were within twelve feet of each other according to her readings. When she reached the fog's perimeter, she stopped for a second. If there was group of them down, it was probably because they were overtaken. If four marines couldn't take out whatever it was that stopped them, a lone medic wouldn't be able to do it either. She pulled up her comlink and scanned for her closest ally, who happened to be fellow medic, 2nd Lieutenant Alexandra Holcomb.

"Lieutenant, this is your Captain. I'm sending you my coordinates. Please come find me."

"Roger."

She switched to thermal vision, but the temperature of the fog skewed the readings. She flipped her entire set of visions up and turned her attention to the fog again. They weren't more than ten yards away, and her medic's nerves were itching to help them. She switched her morphine fingers back on and charged up restorative shots on her belt. She sent a short radio message to their base of operations for medical recovery probes so that the men could be toted back to HQ for more extensive medial treatment.

The four men in the dust were reporting 'down' as their battle status and each were below sixty-percent armor. She was able to pick up weak, erratic heartbeats from three of them; the fourth one's was not transmitting. He could either have a damaged helmet or…or…

"What's the situation?"

Alexandra Holcomb, Second Lieutenant, trotted over beside her. Demeter knew Alexandra from a few previous missions. She wasn't a bad medic, but she was certainly a better pilot. She had applied for a Valkyrie position many times, but so far, she hadn't left the medical operations division of the Epsilon Squad.

"Four men down, three registering heartbeats about twenty-five feet off. And there is a science vessel with two dugout bunkers about sixty feet away from them. It's a miracle the marines in the bunkers aren't attacking the bodies…that means they can't pick up their heat signatures. I wonder if I' getting proper readings? Our sensors are usually pretty acute."

"I'm picking up weak outlines. Can you blind the dragoons? That can send it into retreat."

"I'm not as worried about the dragoon as I am the zealots. I think if we organize this right, we can drag the bodies out of range so we can fix them up. Turn on your Neurostim Gauntlets and heal any gunshots I take."

Alexandra straightened up, aghast. "You're going to take bullets for soldiers who could be dead?"

"Nothing is going to happen to me so long as you stay behind me and keep your gauntlets glued to my torso. And we're all a team out here. The minute we leave someone behind is the minute our unity breaks. You're free to stick a monkey wrench in the works, but I'll take my chances and risk my neck for the squad."

"So are we blinding the dragoon or not?"

"No. It'll just transmit to the zealots, which could move in and attack."

She walked in front of Holcomb and poised herself to sprint. "Ready? I'm a damn good sprinter."

"Let's do it," Alexandra said, and Demeter dug her heel into the ground.

Her legs pumped endlessly. Alexandra kept up, but only that. She watched as the soles of Demeter's shoes swam up and down before her, running hopelessly in pursuit. When Demeter had gained a yard on her, she suddenly slowed, cooing in pain. The ground was sprinkled with a light crimson; Holcomb thrust her arm around Demeter's middle, and heard her take in a comforting breath before starting up vigorously.

The next time Demeter stopped, she actually sank to her knees, cradling a fountain of blood in her arms. The entire front of her armor plating was riddled with bullets, not to mention that small hills were rising along her back where bullets had completely passed through her body. Demeter was glad that this ammo didn't tumble since she had taken a good twenty rounds to the chest.

She felt warmth wash over her as Alexandra caught up. The other medic sighed in exhilaration. "Captain, you alright?"

Demeter almost didn't hear. She had found three of the men lying close to each other, completely unconscious. The ground around them was riddled with bullets and heavily spattered with blood. She checked pulses with her med visor and then stood back to survey the damage. Their lower legs were messes of blood and broken bones; the dragoon had obviously aimed well. She wasn't confident that they'd walk again, but they'd at least live.

She produced three yellow clips from her side pouch and attached them to the back of their neck armor. With a flick from the main remote clenched tightly in her fist, the bodies began to scuttle away, retreating until the enemy was out of range.

She set her hands on the closest one's knees and sank her fingers through his skin. She heard him exhale calmly. "Good boy. It shouldn't hurt anymore. Stay with me, okay?"

She patched up his leg with a specially treated strip of cotton. The liquid soaked into the poultice hissed as it began to expel the bacteria and dirt from his legs and he turned in pain. She poked him again with the morphine, and he went limp. She repeated the routine with his comrades and tagged them with a GPS transmitter so the probes could find them.

She flipped back to thermal imaging and scanned around for the fourth soldier. As she stood, she suddenly doubled over in pain. Several bullets dropped from her midsection with a sickening squish. She activated her magnet, and ripped them form he body, her vision phased by agony. "Alex…please, your Neurostim…"

The other wordlessly obeyed. Instantly, she felt herself again, her pupils eagerly refocusing in the fading light. It was changing from day to dusk. In the distance, she could hear the whir of engines as scouts in formation swept in overhead. Everything seemed to be going smoothly, but now she had alerts popping up like daisies. She could never really tell how things were going since she never was a true-blue fighter, but the thought was discomforting. Half of a battle was the one fought at home in your head.

A blob of heat was situated against a rock not far away. She approached it tentatively and filtered back to her med vision. She saw a helmet laying a few feet to her left; that's why she wasn't able to get a pulse. This one would get demerits for inconveniencing the support crew.

Then her eyes fell upon the pile of soldier sprawled against the rock. He had no right foot left, just tatters of his metal boot. He was bleeding profusely from the same leg's thigh, and something had gored a smoky hole though his stomach. Demeter let out a disappointed breath as Holcomb recoiled in disgust. "Zealot, I'll warrant."

She manually checked pulse. The blood contained there was barely strong enough to put pressure on the vessel walls, but it was enough. She took his head in her hands.

"Come on, Private. We're not gonna lose you," she breathed. She injected a double dose of morphine into his temples before pulling out two poultice patches and twisting them into balls. She then plugged the hole in his stomach with them and put pressure on his jugular vein and artery. The blood once again began to navigate through the remainder of his body.

She extracted a long strip of coiled wires from her belt and tore through his armor with her knife. She flattened the strip against his chest and activated wit with a flash from her medic arm. The edges sank through the skin and shoved his chest wide open, the ribs flexing as stress trembled within them. He had shards of his own armor buried in internal tissues that she precisely removed with her magnetic plate. She stitched the holes shut and sterilized his innards with a wave of light before ordering the apparatus to close his chest. A thick purple line sprang up as the machine detached, slithering back into her belt.

Her hands went again to his wrists. Feeling a stronger pulse, her hands sank to the sides of his ribcage. "This is your last battle, kiddo. Let's get you out of here."

She inhaled sharply and pressed her mouth against his, exhaling into the bloody cavern. His lungs expanded as her hands commanded his diaphragm to contract and she forced air into him. She then sucked it back out again and held it for four counts; then back in, hold for three, back out, hold for four. She alternated between two reps of three and four and two reps of three and seven. Before long, he was breathing on his own, and the colour came back in his face.

Holcomb was immensely impressed. "Where'd you learn that?"

"It's a Hauter Breathing Technique. There are seven patterns, each that access different parts of the central nervous system; that one in particular commands the victim to respire from his spinal cord. In other words, he bypasses the orders of his panicking brain and breathes instinctively. It's something I've learned after running a few missions with Master Sergeant Scott Findlay."

"That's creepy in the coolest way possible."

She tagged him was a GPS tracker, and signed onto HQ's radio frequency.

"We have a potentially terminally injured soldier at location 12. Requesting recon orders for myself, Captain Demeter Starling."

"Roger. Watch your position, Capta—"

The order came too late. The ground behind her was suddenly shoved upwards as the nose of a Protoss scout hurdled down from the sky, smoking profusely. She only barely managed to get out of the way by sidestepping Holcomb, who took the blow at full force. Her petite frame was shattered to pieces in seconds, flying into the air alongside metal and exhaust.

As Demeter was tossed roughly backwards, one of the cabersol needles broke inside her pack. The acidic compounds began to burn through the pressure-treated leather of her side arm bag, spilling precious steroid fluid across her virgin skin. It was not directly absorbed into the bloodstream, but it made her a little crazy. Colours could be perceived by more than just her eyes; she found herself recoiling at the smell of green and the sound of marine fire thundered through her lips. The world tasted painful as she swallowed, staggering to her knees.

A spherically shaped thing before her suddenly split and a figure rose from it elegantly, alighting it until it stood before her. She could see the burns reclining on its flesh, and, impulsively, she reached out, her arm lighting up as it sprung to work. The shape sank to her level, presenting its arm to her. She activated the Neurostim and paralyzed the region before cutting it open, removing several shards of some strange crystalline substance before cauterizing the incision with another red light from her hand.

_Thank you, Captain_, said a voice in her head.

"Hoo-rah," she said languidly, pitching forward into a light breeze.


	2. 02 Complications

02:40AM September 4th

Zeratul's flagship, outer orbit of Braxis

Zeratul knew the protocol for prisoners of war: discover their motives, negotiate terms of release with their superiors, and then barter them away. The Terrans used to be the easiest to extort, as they would go to great lengths to recover even the pettiest of officers, but they had since become less sensitive and adopted the ways of the Zerg—meaning if release could not be settled, then the unit was simply forgotten. However, Captain Demeter Starling had been preemptively forgotten, and this astonished Zeratul greatly.

All incoming, non-native transmissions—that is, transmissions remote from the Conclave—were manually examined by that Carrier's admiral. As Prelate of the newly formed Conclave, he was naturally the admiral of any given ship he was on, assuming the Matriarch or Artanis were not present. Rarely were such transmissions ever up for his review, so he was sure to pay close attention to the glowing blue file that appeared on the viewer. He selected it mentally, grumbling when he remembered these new computers had not been linked to the psi. He swiped at it angrily.

It was written in assembly language. Zeratul was absolutely puzzled.

_That means this is a Terran signal…_

_That medic must be something. She's already getting messages from home._

It had a viral tag on the front of it, and Zeratul skimmed through the rest of the program idly. Terran viruses could not penetrate Protoss computer systems.

_Sent to her helmet…no message attached, though. Perhaps this is a GPS ID signal to triangulate her position?_

He stopped abruptly at line 90.

_This is a self-destruct command._

The Terrans had sent the medic a termination transmission.

Termination transmissions detonated a small incinerator chip along the dorsal side of the target helmet, which created an acidic rinse with a blast radius of three feet. Used mainly for soldiers gone rogue or those missing-in-action, the termination function was designed to destroy the technology and the body, leaving only a pool of hydrogen-ion-saturated liquid as evidence of existence. She _was_ missing in action, though a typical MIA termination had to wait four months before making the tribunal circuit, where it would stay for another year or so.

Still…

He tapped the screen lightly, calling up the video feed of her stasis cell.

She was in an iso-osmotic high-mineral stasis suspension since most humans' epithelial cells rupture in hypertonic low-mineral stasis. The cool blue light reflected limply across the smooth expanse of her skin, dying the pale pink complexion a light cyan. Her hair was curling in the water and her left eye was twitching, as if in some transitional dream. She was clad in the simple white barracks uniform, which was slightly ruffled on her arm where the cabersol had dissolved through her arm pack.

Zeratul ran his mind along the soft turn of her forelimb.

_She tore a red and white sticker off its wax backing and plastered it across the helmet of a severely wounded soldier. He was missing his legs, but his face looked calm and serene in sleep, as if pacified by the pain._

_"__We have a potentially terminally injured soldier at location 12. Requesting recon orders for myself, Captain Demeter Starling," she said into her commlink. A medic near her was adjusting her gloves—_

_—and she quickly evaporated in a cloud of blood and dirt._

_The colours in her vision began to blend suddenly, as if ripped together in a mixer. The ground beneath her sighed as the earth split, unseen caverns and mineral veins forcing themselves to the surface as a metal pyramid wormed itself tightly into the tiled soil. There were soft glowing green lights humming along the edges of the shape, but otherwise her vision was dark._

_A thought cascaded idly from her mind. "Find your soldiers, girl. Heal them. Find your soldiers!"_

_A shape began morphing out of the bubbles of darkness in her sight, a tall, elongated human with shining bright eyes. Its arm was mottled from a burn and tarnished with melted plastic and metal. Her arm flew out with the Neurostim tip flaming._

_The skin shook off the metal before dividing to let the attachment suck out more shrapnel. The gauntlet cauterized the wound with a searing light and smoothed over the incisions with a fresh layer of regenerating skin. A prod to apply the painkiller, and all was right._

_An odd sensation flooded her as an alien voice quaked in her mind. 'Thank you, Captain.'_

_Her vision was waning. "Hoo-rah," she said, and an image of her laughing at the barracks came up before she plunged away into nothing._

She was technically a rogue. She had healed the enemy. She clearly had done so out of instinct—instinct she had acquired from Resocialization in her training—but that would make little difference in her trial against the state. The UED was particularly unforgiving on matters of treason. Still, that didn't seem like enough to tip the scales out of her favour…she was the highest-ranked medic in her brigade, and the first medic or woman to make it to Captain. She commanded the entire Bravo Company of the Epsilon squadron. It seemed a bit preemptive to eliminate her without further questioning, considering the monetary investment the UED had already made in her and the heroic symbolism she had to medics and women that had been commissioned for battle.

Still, the situation put her in quite the sticky situation, even with the Protoss. She had not shown hostility towards them and, under general principle and battle honor code, noncombatants were not to be harmed. She was not participating in the actual fighting, but she was helping it by healing her men. Then again, that was her job. But she breached both UED and Protoss protocol when she healed the Scout pilot that had crash-landed next to her.

And it complicated things when the Scout pilot was Artanis, the Protoss Praetor.

Yes, even the Praetor showed her mercy, hence why she was not immediately sliced to pieces on the spot. Zeratul had not spoken to Artanis since the whole ordeal, and, now that the fleet was moving on to Char, he decided it would be in her best interest to consult him before making a decision as to her fate. He called up the Praetor's commlink.

The familiar smooth, yellow-green features of his swam into view. His aura of tranquility was almost visible over the connection. Zeratul bowed. "Greetings, Praetor."

"The same to you, Prelate," he said, quick to speak. "I am guessing this is about the young Captain and her situation on Braxis?"

"Yes," Zeratul said, eyes narrowing. "I have just received a termination signal for her helmet from UED command. It appears she is not wanted over there for some strange reason, which means she is a prisoner of war we cannot gamble back. We truly have no use for her, and I have not decided what to do with her."

Artanis looked deep in thought. "Why would they terminate such a useful and well-decorated officer? It seems like somewhat of an expensive investment to simply throw away after a bad mission."

"My thoughts exactly. There is one other viable option that I have not fully considered, but it is still open: she could have been involved in some sort of inconvenient political scandal, though a violent reaction of this magnitude is atypical for Terrans."

"Perhaps were should rouse her and question her first-hand."

Zeratul nodded formally. "I shall handle the interrogation myself."

"Please, Zeratul, it is not an interrogation," Artanis said lightly. "She is too young to possibly do any damage."

"The younger ones turn it into an interrogation," he said, the reluctance present in his voice. "I expect to hear a long while of her spouting off her name, rank, and serial number, as mandated by Terran POW protocol. The young think those rules will save them."

Artanis sighed as the commlink was severed, and Zeratul sent orders to her medical assistants to remove the sedative feeds. He swept down the Carrier's bridge into the elevator, impatient to start yet eager to get it over with.

She was barely awake when he arrived, sitting unbound in a chair. If need be, he could subdue her with psionics, but he sensed a weird experience about her, as if she knew better than to fight but was still ignorant enough to disobey. She shifted uneasily and tried blinking her eyes to focus her vision. Her blonde hair was sticking in sweaty clumps to her forehead and the braid down her back was unkempt from her transfer and treatment in the mineral suspension.

Zeratul entered her mind in a single stroke. She bolted upright and twisted her neck to see him, still half-blind. "Who's there?"

Her voice was thin and high, tinged slightly with worry. The fear sounded strange in her ringing feminine tones.

"My name is Zeratul, Prelate of the Protoss," he said, bored already. "You are a captured prisoner of war."

She stared at him blankly, clearly unable to focus. There was an odd sheen over her eyes, and Zeratul felt a psi moving through her…she seemed to conduct it, almost.

_It is simply an outreach of the Uraj. It is calling everyone, it seems…_

She was still blinking rapidly, but she managed to slur out, "My name is Demeter Starling, my rank is Captain, First Class, the Epsilon Squadron, and—"

"—your serial number is STR-DEM-0000-000-02."

She froze—still unable to see—and then slung her head in her hands. "Oh, God, Protoss. Mind-readers. Did we lose?"

"The entire shipyard was razed. Yes."

She sighed. "Dammit. I'm in hot shit, then."

"It would appear so," Zeratul said primly. "Perhaps you can enlighten me—we just received a termination signal sent to your helmet, obviously meant to kill you, as your helmet was transmitting healthy vitals."

She froze again, fear climbing her body, but Zeratul continued. "After reviewing your record, it would seem to be an unwise course of action to terminate a soldier in the prime of her career. I am hoping you might elucidate on the matter at hand, Captain."

She stared at him open-mouthed, clearly in disbelief, and, clearly, she was none the wiser. Zeratul sighed. "We are not in the habit of killing our prisoners, Captain, but nor do we simply release them without terms of exchange. The UED has shown enough to prove that they are not even mildly interested in your return, which is peculiar, to say the least."

"What happens if I don't' have a good excuse?"

"You will be stripped of your rank and belongings and placed under military arrest until further notice," he said. Before he could ask his next question, he caught the thought running though her mind. '_My helmet…_'

UED soldiers own two things: their dress uniform and combat helmet. Each helmet transmits a unique frequency and is usually customized to the wearer's liking. Demeter had upgraded her helmet to suit her fancy, including things like air conditioning, sweat proof spray, and sniper vision to supplement her Zipper 12. For these reasons, it was against protocol to leave helmets outside of living quarters—this was enforced socially as lost helmets were vandalized and hung out for all to see—or to remove them during battle.

Zeratul noted a spike in psionic activity as she mumbled, "Where's my helmet?"

"Have you no defense, Captain?"

She looked at him for a while, attempting to scry an emotion out of his bleak features, but then hung her head. "No."

She was going over the last few things she remembered—talking to Holcomb, radioing Command for recon probes, then the Scout cash-landed next to her and nearly killed her, but she healed something, a shadowy figure who could speak with his mind…

'_Alexei_,' she thought. '_Too perfect. This is all too perfect for du Galle…Alexei will come to save me._'

"Then, Demeter Starling, on behalf of the Protoss Conclave, I am here for your arrest. Your helmet has been consolidated. I will need your consent as a prisoner of the Conclave to renounce your rank as Captain."

Instantly, she retorted, "Dream on, baldy."

Zeratul's eyes narrowed, and he cloaked himself, pressing into her mind. Her eyes told her she was alone, but her head… her head knew better. He was still here, lurking distantly…

_You will never be alone, Starling, unless you renounce your rank. The other option is significantly more permanent._

She gulped, weighing her options.

'_Goddammit, Alexei_.'

"Alright. I'm not a Captain anymore."

She wanted to cry. Being a civilian permitted crying, though her honor didn't. Zeratul flashed back into sight and she jumped. His eyes were still narrowed in annoyance. "Good. I would have disliked killing you."

* * *

Back at the bridge of his ship, Zeratul received a transmission from Artanis. Aldaris, the Matriarch, and Kerrigan were present as well. "Prelate, we are having problems summoning aerial units through the Warp Matrix. The mission will have to proceed entirely on the ground."

Kerrigan cocked her head to the side. "That's fine. You might want to land all important units in case they attack from the air since we won't be able to get back-up for anything going on over our heads."

"Kerrigan has a point," Artanis conceded reluctantly. "Zeratul, land the prisoner. She cannot remain in the air if we are attacked. We need to keep our hands clean of UED blood."

"UED?" Kerrigan said inquisitively. She had the hungry look in her eyes again. "I thought just the Dominion was down here."

"The UED is holding a blockade on the eastern side. I expect we should encounter them on our way out," Zeratul said curtly. Kerrigan was not among his favourites.

"Mmm, I _love_ the UED," she said evilly. "What's this about a prisoner?"

"It is none of your concern," Aldaris snapped.

"Silence, Judicator," the Matriarch said with the sharp intonation of a flicked whip. "Artanis captured a noncombatant. She is being held captive until we can negotiate a release."

"_She_?" Kerrigan said, her face lighting up. "It's a _girl_?"

"There will be no release," Zeratul said, ignoring the Terran. "The UED has sent a self-destruct command to her unit, essentially erasing her from their sensors. For now, I am holding her until the Conclave can determine a better use for her."

"Well, bring her down, boys!" Kerrigan said excitedly. "I haven't laid into a UED bitch in a long while."

"Absolutely not," Artanis injected. "I will not be accused of war crimes with the UED. We do not need any more enemies. For now, the Zerg is quite enough. She is under my protection until stated otherwise, and you shall not lay a hand on her, Kerrigan. I mean that."

"Artanis, you old softie, you're going to execute her anyways. At least let me get a good look at her before you whack her down."

"She is a _medic_, Kerrigan, and we are not sanctioned to execute noncombatants by Khala law," Artanis whined.

"She _was_ carrying a sidearm quadruple the size of a normal medic," Zeratul remarked. "Medics typically carry a semi-automatic Stingerette to provide cover-fire for their patients. She was carrying a Snapdragon Zipper 12, equipped with a sniper scope and six Snapdragon charges for taking down small machines. The next upgraded gun would have been the C-10—"

"—Canister rifle, for ghosts," Kerrigan said. "Don't sound much like a noncombatant to me. Ghosts don't tote around pop-guns."

For a brief moment, Zeratul was reminded that she herself was once a Terran. Kerrigan was one of the best, Jim had always said, and he theorized that half her hatred had come from the robbery of her career as Mengsk's top ghost. Zeratul could see very little human left in her anymore.

"Regardless, we are forbidden to allow any harm to come to her until the Conclave decides her fate."

Kerrigan pouted. "Well, damn. You all are no fun. No wonder the Xel'Naga ditched you."

"Watch your tongue, Zerg witch," Zeratul said crossly. "We have not forgotten your crimes against us. You would do well to not forget that."

"What are you doing with her until then?" Kerrigan asked, ignoring the Prelate, much to his chagrin.

"After she is flown down, I will meet with her to see if we can ascertain why she was terminated. Zeratul suspects political scandal. I suspect treason."

"Scandal? The UED has scandal? And here I was, thinking they were a bunch of worthless brats with mind-control microwave ovens."

"She kept mentioning the Vice-Admiral in her thoughts," Zeratul said. "She refers to him by his first name. She made it sound has if the Admiral was trying to be rid of her. She could be having an affair with the Vice-Admiral that affects his work, and du Galle could be trying to eliminate her."

"Not a very subtle guy, huh?"

"Yes, it is quite bold, even for Terrans," he said, careful not to anger Kerrigan. She said nothing, and he continued. "Uncharacteristic, but still believable."

"Well, shit, Zeratul, you've got a perfectly good UED medic in your lap and you're just gonna let her rot away in the name of your precious Conclave?" Kerrigan laughed at the irony. "If you won't let me eat her and you can't return her, you might as well make her earn her keep and put her to work."

"Her technology is incompatible with anything non-Terran."

"I could use a healer."

"If her healing you consist of you consuming her, then no," Zeratul said flatly.

She rolled her eyes. "Come on, Zeratul. You know I'm right. You just want to be unreasonable to prove a point."

"Other than to support you, she has no reason to go out, nor can we trust her to go out. I don't think she would even provide that much support."

"Bullets _do _slow me down. And you _know_ I'll keep an eye on her." Kerrigan grinned maliciously. "No treason on her end of the stick if I've got my set on her."

"Why are you so interested in her?" Artanis asked.

"Nostalgic. I wonder what's happened last I left the UED. And there sure as hell weren't combat medics when I was serving. Gotta stay with it."

Zeratul disliked speaking with Kerrigan. She had an odd way of backing him into corners he did not care to be in. Sighing, he said, "She might as well. If the Matriarch approves, then I will clear her to go."

Raszagal hummed quietly over the commlink. "If she is not a direct threat to the mission at hand, she may go. I think we all will agree that if she begins to interfere with the collection of the crystal, she must be killed."

"What if we are charged with war crimes?" Artanis said.

"If even her own UED has tuned its back on her, then I doubt we will be charged with anything. If she killed, then we may point out that the UED attempted to murder her while she was alive in our possession."

"The Matriarch is right," Zeratul said. "She is not a prisoner of the state; she will be Kerrigan's aide until she exhausts her purpose."

With that, the commlink closed as all ships prepared for landing. Zeratul had the odd feeling that he had just catalyzed a huge mistake, but he drowned it with a prayer to the Khala for strength.


	3. 03 An Unusual Assignment

A/N SC 2 has brought me back to this. Will churning out one more chapter in the next two days.

* * *

Demeter Starling, like any other medic, was grown in a twelve-and-a-half gallon vat of gene-positive growth suspension.

Her serial number tells all: STR-DEM-0000-000-02. She was born in the STARLING generation, which was named after Rhett Starling, the aristocrat who had bought the UED spawning bond that year; her given first name was DEMETER, and she was the second child to hatch. There were eight million and twenty children in her generation, all created from Rhett's DNA: they were docile, calm, focused, and had such a balked stubbornness that it bordered on stupidity. The males went on to become research test subjects, though a few became staff on science vessels. The women were perfect pilots; the ones who had inherited more of the tame trait became dropship operators and the feistier ladies found themselves Captains of valkyries.

Demeter, however, was one of two thousand in her generation who failed all diagnostic tests and was scheduled for termination.

Before the termination order went before a grand jury, Rhett was notified and he flew in to examine the runts. Despite the enormity of his generation, he was upset that his own DNA had sponsored so many duds.

"Seems like a waste of spare flesh to simply incinerate," he said dully. "You don't need any more test subjects?"

"We have almost five million test subjects from your generation alone," the commandant said. "We could put them in agriculture, but even then, the Sapello generation has that more than covered."

"None of them are psionic?"

"That's the first test we run, sir."

"You have absolutely no use for them?"

"We're perfectly willing to turn them over to you, sir."

Rhett weighed the option for a little bit, but then shook his head. The commandant cleared his throat. "We do have openings in a nursing program for the women. Usually those are partially psionic as well."

"Take all of the females and have them re-tested. I will see if any of my resources need slave labour."

Demeter was the only one who qualified. Her psi index, which had previously tested at .6, tested as 2.4, one-tenth away from qualifying her for the medic program. She was force-added under orders from Vice-Admiral Stukov, who continued to check her progress in the coming years.

He was delighted to find that she had matured wonderfully.

* * *

Kerrigan hadn't been this excited since…well, ever.

Everything was coming together perfectly, even though things like that usually never happened. Kerrigan had left herself wiggle room in case things took a turn for the worse, but now she had found that a lone UED medic had suddenly and inexplicably filled the gap. She wasn't angry. She couldn't be; it was all too perfect.

She did hate riding in warp ships, though. Everything was cold and methodical…not warm and comforting like the holding chambers of the Hive's transports. On good days, zerglings would brawl, their forelimbs flashing with blood and the rest of them in the chamber would yell and scream with pleasure. It was invigorating, and excited the rest of the troops. Here, everything was serene and ordered, and extraordinary behavior was discouraged and punishable.

A wayward thought was drifting limply through the bridge. Kerrigan caught it, and devoured it greedily. A zealot nearby clutched his head in pain. Kerrigan smiled. _Your dreams are delicious, puny one…_

Zeratul had been following the thought, but once it caught Kerrigan's eye, he knew it was finished. He peacefully extracted himself from the zealot's dreams of glory to focus on the task at hand. He eyed Kerrigan as he glided past.

She flared her nostrils. "When are we deploying? We broke atmo about an hour ago."

"Scanners are trying to find a safe place for us to land," Zeratul said nonchalantly. "Artanis is briefing the Executor as we speak, and I am on my way to fetch your assistant for hers."

Kerrigan perked up. "Oooh, sounds fun. Tell her I'm the biggest bitch in Koprulu."

"Your reputation precedes you," Zeratul said, narrowing his eyes. "I'm sure she is aware."

She pouted as he walked away. Zeratul was not fond of having Kerrigan on _his_ ship, much less retrieving _his_ crystal and cavorting around with _his_ prisoner. It set an unpleasant precedent for him, as far as his record with traitors went.

Then again, if there were no mercy in the world, Artanis never would have accepted him back into the Conclave. And, with the Protoss so divided, the new Overmind may have retaken Kerrigan…

He dismissed the thought back into the deeper folds of his mind, and tapped open the prisoner's holding cell. He broadcasted a strong psionic alert to forewarn her should she be in a compromising position. After delaying idly for a minute, he swept inside the room and closed the door behind him. "Starling, I am here to discuss something with you."

She was sitting on a recliner and dragging her finger across the fiber-optic window, charting the ripples undulating from her fingertips. She looked up as he drew closer, and jumped to her feet clumsily, standing before him with an almost restrained force spinning around her. She nodded quickly. "Yes? Can I help you?"

"Yes, you can," Zeratul said, his vocal frequency tinged with a slight laughter. "I have come to summon you personally to pre-mission briefing."

Her eyes spun a little as she computed what he said. She swallowed thickly. "You mean to say I will be on a mission with the Protoss."

"Among others," Zeratul said vaguely. "We will return to you all armor and side arms, including your helmet and Zipper 12."

A thought sizzled across her forebrain. _I could shoot him with it when he gives it to me_.

Zeratul paused for a moment, waiting for mental retaliation.

_No, no, I would be lasered in a second. And where would I go? My frequency to HQ has been terminated. Unless Alexei is still searching for me…_

"Of course, all restraints have been generously applied, both to your helmet and your munitions. You will be caring for only one patient who will be heavily armed, so I doubt you will need to provide cover fire, or even treatment. You are more of a novelty on this mission than an actual soldier."

Demeter drew herself together. "I will have to decline. I am not interested in providing voluntary help to an enemy."

Zeratul's eyes shrank maliciously. "You assume I was asking for your compliance, Starling. Now, you are now a prisoner of the Conclave. Until you appear before the courts, you are entrusted to me." He reopened the door and motioned for her to leave. "Come. You will be escorted to the briefing chamber."

Kerrigan listened to all her thoughts while Zeratul and his armed escort shepherded the medic on her way. Kerrigan sensed a glumness about the girl, and was careful to cloak herself as she trailed along behind.

Her face was plain at best. Kerrigan was not impressed. She herself was placed high among the Terrans for beauty (but no longer, of course). Granted, most of the girls in the Ghost program had trimmed their features to perfection, thanks to selective growing psionics. Particularly, this girl's psi index was high, but that's about all that was remarkable about her. As the briefing doors slid open, the Queen of Blades turned left down the hallway to a separate, more private briefing chamber.

_Wouldn't want to scare the poor girl, would we?_

Zasz was cackling somewhere in the recesses of her mind, his distant memory apparently amused by her nostalgic foolishness.

* * *

Demeter had every intention of arming herself and shelling out. She had planned it perfectly all through the configuration of the conference call, ignoring Zeratul's mental aura to concentrate on thoughts of her own: she would call Alexei on her commlink, he would either send in a rescue team or contact the Protoss to conduct an exchange, and she would go back home to her squadron.

She hoped that her helmet's frequency hadn't been completely terminated. She knew she wouldn't register as all ally…ideally, she would register on a noncombatant civilian frequency. Then again, she could be so far out of the UED's reach that she might not register on any frequency at all.

_Alexei's got to be looking for me…_

_Starling, do you realize you are on a conference with all psionic beings?_

Demeter screamed out loud, but quickly covered her mouth with her hand. The Dark Templar next to her seemed to be glaring from behind his face mask. Instead of feeling violated, she just felt stupid; it must have been like she was talking out loud to them—it had happened before, when she was upset about something one of her drillers had said and she had wandered into the ghost testing center…that was miserable.

Zeratul had her place her hand in the center of a polished crystal screen; after a few moments, the screen whizzed to life, pulling the images of several other Protoss across the conference link. Not one of them had mouths, but only one had the floral psionic crest that Zeratul had. Their eyes were like tiny suns, affixed at the wide end of their smooth, elongated faces. Even as aliens, there was a peculiar beauty to them.

"Prelate," the other crested one said, the voice faintly female but still foggy from the psi, "please introduce your accomplice."

Demeter hoped the idiom was intact in the Protoss' English, because 'accomplice' sounded a lot better than 'prisoner'.

"This is former-Captain Demeter Starling, UED combat medic form the Epsilon Squadron First Division," he hummed, bored. "She will be accompanying the Praetor's forces on Braxis, and is entrusted with caring for Kerrigan for the duration of—"

He stopped suddenly to muffle a scream from the girl trembling next to him. Demeter had wanted to burst out, "WHAT?" but an invisible hand closed her mouth and froze her lungs as Zeratul's mental voice rang in her mind. _Former Sons of Korhal Lieutenant Specialist Sarah Kerrigan._

It was true. _The _Kerrigan, the Queen of Blades, the one being the Reconstruction hadn't taught her how to deal with, but her mind had—fear was the only thing that came to mind when Demeter thought of Kerrigan, as cleaning up all the beat-up soldiers and recovering their half-consumed corpses scared her half to death. She could cleave the very heart of a man through his chest with her claws, and feed on its still-beating flesh as he died in front of her. Demeter was sickened at the thought, and emotionally wounded from the sights.

Reconstruction had helped her cope with the pain, but now she would have to face Kerrigan firsthand, with restrictions of her equipment and under pain of death from the Protoss—

-then she understood.

_They're executing me._

Protoss history and cultural precedent had established that every Protoss, in order to die an honorable death, must either die of old age or in battle. They were going to kill her with honor, by dealing her a battle wound that she would never live from. Kerrigan could kill her from fifty paces, or eat her on the spot, or thresh her to pieces—what was honorable about being committed to execution by a Zerg Queen?

_This is not death, little one._

Zeratul's eyes burned hot in hers. She tried to decipher his expressionless face, wondering if his words were a metaphor for being 'reborn in death' or something, but it was useless. Panic and fear had given way to despair, that such a simple mistake on her own battlefield had caused her death on another.

Kerrigan's face appeared on the screen, smiling lightly. "Hello, child. Don't worry—I'm actually here to keep you safe."

Zeratul placed a loose hand on her shoulder. "Kerrigan, as a prisoner of war, she must be returned to me in the same condition as when she leaves my sight. If I judge her to be in _any_ ways changed, there will be dire consequences that will be dealt with immediately."

A false sense of security fell around her, but she tried not to fool herself into thinking she'd survive this. She only saw images of the destruction and blood and the flashes of bones so sharp they looked like metal. She'd seen a zergling. It scared the hell out of every man in her platoon.

"And those are just the babies," Kerrigan drawled, pupils tightening in anticipation."

Demeter swallowed thickly. "If you're executing me by forcing me to protect something that has killed more men than I've saved, you're batshit. I'll eat my Zipper first."

His glare seemed to give her a headache. "You are _not_ being executed."

"You're sending me on a mission with… with _her_."

"She is not permitted to harm you in any way."

"Have you taken a history class? She isn't a listener!"

Zeratul's glare was making her head pound; she rubbed her temple as her gaze fell to the floor. "She's murdered my soldiers. My friends. Her stuff… it's the entire reason we're Reconstructed. Blades and blood in the dark, screams like metal on metal… _her_." Her confidence rose from the melancholy. "What POW enumeration demands I participate in enemy missions?"

"Your impetus to live," he snarled back.

"So you _are _executing me."

"Only if you choose to be like me and not listen," Kerrigan laughed. "It'll be easy. I don't bite other women, and I miss the old days. Maybe you can remind me."

Demeter's eyes showed nothing but panic; Zeratul had regretted this since the pre-briefing but now it was just getting worse. She stared up at him hopelessly. "Why are you with her? She's a monster. She's the enemy. _Our _enemy."

Zeratul was hard-pressed not to voice his agreement. "Things have changed."

"Maybe if you ask nicely, I'll tell you," Kerrigan teased.

Demeter's eyes were bright, but sad. "Why are you doing this to me? I was nice to the airship pilot…"

Zeratul heard Artanis thrum at her words, but the Praetor kept his voice calm. "You will not be harmed, Starling. Our Executor will accompany you to the surface."

"It'll be a party!"

"As will I."

Artanis bristled mentally, but Zeratul turned back to the monitor. "As surety to Kerrigan's associate, I will accompany the Executor and the prisoner to Char."

The Praetor's thoughts hummed angrily. _This is escalating quickly._

_ Kerrigan is quiet. She wanted Starling to go alone. She is planning something._

The Praetor adjusted himself in his seat. "This is acceptable. Transport awaits you in the second hangar. May Adun watch over you all."

* * *

Demeter had never clutched her Zipper so tightly in her life. It was nice to have it back again, but the thought of being deployed with the Queen of Blades kept any wayward feelings of safety at bay. Zeratul had her helmet tucked under his arm—which was slathered in armor, much like the rest of him—but even the sight of it made her long for home.

_Home_.

The thought felt foreign to her, as if thought for her by another. Home was a barracks somewhere in space; since they had lost on Braxis, no doubt the UED had been forced back into the deep black. What she would give to see the stars pass by as everyone played drinking games to the music…

At last, the ship rattled softly and the muted sound of a distant hydraulic echoed through the chamber. Zeratul stood as the doors twitched then opened, the equalizing wind sweeping his cloak around him. He held out her helmet.

She took it gently, but then jammed it on her head in a rush, firing up the main computer and waiting for the instruments to sync up. The usual battle UI popped up in blue, but the commlink menu was frozen still with the last names of the soldiers on Braxis reporting their armor and pulses stuck in grey. She turned it off and sighed. _Of course it wouldn't be that easy. _

_You were foolish to think so._

She jumped at the voice—it echoed clearly through her mind like a native thought, but she new that pitch. Zeratul walked off the ramp, vanishing with every step.

_Behave, little one_.

Her throat was dry and it hurt to swallow. She told herself it was the atmosphere and fumbled for her humidity switch. It disabled her sweat control, but she felt a little better.

She had been deployed with Epsilon when they razed a Tal'Darim outpost on some no-name, number-only moon and heard one of her soldiers remark that it felt like destroying an ancient history museum. The buildings were smooth and tall, phallic but still possessing a primeval aesthetic that had a particular aura about it—the Protoss were a warrior culture. Perhaps that was it. It always felt like a battleground.

It was no different now. The ship had dropped her just inside the photon cannon perimeter—she _hated_ treating phase wounds, they burned shut and bled in all the wrong places and made armor too hot to hold metal putty—and several platoons of dragoons and zealots were mobilizing to scout beyond the probe line. She found herself staring at one of the pylons spinning slowly within a sturdy, golden ring; the crystal was iridescent and hovering off the ground in an unnatural fashion. The hovercrafts in the UED were massive behemoths of flat metal stabilizers and fans so powerful it would get gravel in the smallest grooves of her helmet. The pylon seemed… delicate.

_Starling_.

She jumped again, almost head-butting the Executor in the chin. The old Protoss took a step away, a scowl in his green eyes. "Shall I speak at you instead?"

"Sorry," she fumbled. "Where is… where is my charge?"

The Executor's expression calmed. "To the east, settling her troops. You are not to enter the perimeter of her base without your escort." He motioned to one of the marshals, who shooed a dragoon and two zealots in his direction. The three of them saluted the Executor, who turned back to her. "If you dislike thought-speech, you will have difficulty communicating with Orakin." The dragoon's center bubble glowed brightly.

_En taro Fenix, human_, a voice rang in her mind. _We stand with you today._

She nodded at him, trying to discern eyes from the blue abyss in the bubble. "Um, thanks." She flipped her visor up to look at the Executor. "May I be granted my rank back in battle? Or am I just… 'human' for all of this?"

He shook his head. "This is your escort, not your squadron. They will call you by your surname 'Starling' as your rank has been stripped. You renounced it yourself." He pointed to the dragoon. "Orakin is a Templar, you may refer to him as such. The zealots may be called what you wish."

She was too scared to pout so she nodded instead. "And my orders?"

"We are recovering the crystal Khalis to the southeast of our position. If our first attempt fails, we will assault the infant Overmind to the west."

It was like someone knocked the wind out of her. "The _Overmind_? The Overmind is gone! It was killed—killed and safe for the fleet to… to…"

The Executor's eyes hardened. "The cerebrates will not let their patriarch die. We must see to it ourselves. We will avoid it if we can." He seemed calm. "Make your best on the attempt for the crystal if you fear it so."

She couldn't believe it. _The Overmind_… _Kerrigan… on the same planet_…

"You will accompany our first push into the Zerg formations south of Kerrigan's position. Once we are prepared, you will be dispatched with her forces to flank. We estimate about forty minutes until—"

"Executor, an observer has just located two burrowed lurkers to the west, above the ramp just beyond the perimeter." He tapped his wrist armor, unfazed.

"Zeratul and his Dark Templar will handle it."

"As you say, Executor."

Demeter's knees were trembling so hard, she put her Zipper on the ground for stability. A familiar voice hummed through her head.

_It begins._


	4. 04 Whispers From Beyond

**Chapter 4: Whispers From Beyond**

Zeratul held vigil over his prisoner in silence, as did her escort. She had taken up position with Orakin and the other dragoons behind the photon cannons on the western perimeter—no doubt to stay as far away as possible from the Zerg encampment to the east—and had done her fair share of shooting. She was re-pumping her Zipper 12 for a fourth time, trimming its energy magazine with mechanical precision.

Her thoughts were a hopeless mess of emotions coupled with the brute impulse to sort and stay them. Reconstruction was a powerful thing; she frequently fought the urge to take aim at the zealots' soft points as they advanced upon attack. Her thermal vision had proved helpful in avoiding a line of lurker spikes that the observer missed for its patrol just out of reach of detection.

She hadn't cried, not yet at least. Raynor spoke of the combat women as fragile things who would break down at the sound of gunfire. Hyperbole, to be sure, but the old Dark Templar was wary.

The Executor's voice broadcasted clearly through his communication link. "Prelate, Kerrigan is ready to move. Shall I give Starling her orders or shall you?"

"Go ahead. I will follow behind. I don't trust the Zerg Queen to upkeep her end of the bargain."

"As you command, Prelate."

"Speak softly. Humans who hear voices in their heads are marked as lunatics. She is worn enough already."

"As you command, Prelate."

He saw her press a finger to her earplate, nodding every other moment, before turning to speak to Orakin. He led her lengthwise across the perimeter, flanked by the pair of zealots, down the ramp into the open battlefield. She flexed her hand armor, poking at the screen on the underside of her forearm, and relaxed when the six rings on each arm burst to life with a faint green glow.

He followed swiftly, keeping his distance. Orakin broke a trail to the east, careful to keep his steps as silent as possible. Demeter readied her rifle and flipped on her thermal vision.

They arrived at the embankment leading up to Kerrigan's hive cluster and he saw Demeter turn of her thermal camera—the encampment was radiating heat and the putrid smell of a festering wound was pervasive and pungent. She hesitated going up the ramp, but when the zealots turned to see why she stopped, she took a breath to steady herself before following the Templar into the creep.

_Don't show them your fear. They feed off it, dream of it. Hate them instead._

The words from Reconstruction thrummed in her head, but it was no use. Fear bubbled out of her like a geyser in the nether regions of Shakuras—and surely Kerrigan could taste it.

The Queen of Blades was standing amongst her pets, stroking one of their heads in what could perhaps be considered a 'loving' manner. Her bony wings were spread out behind her in a visceral display of dominance, and she flexed them at the sight of Demeter's little troupe.

"Ah, Captain, we meet at last," she crowed, and Zeratul felt Demeter's legs go numb. Her mind was commanding them to move but they had simply stopped. Her grip tightened on her rifle, trigger finger pointing straight in the air to avoid a misfire.

_I'm dead. I'm dead, I'm dead, I'm dead._

Zeratul regretted this deeply. She would come out of this alive—this he swore—but she would be changed. Broken. Forced to tend to the being who had given her entire race a death blow that they fought hard to beat. Forced to confront her nightmares just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Kerrigan winked at her, and the zerglings parted to let her through, though none were snarling. They stared at their mistress, aching to feel her attention once again. Demeter stopped when Orakin did, despite Kerrigan's motions to usher her forward. "Come, Captain. You should get to see just what you're in for."

She gulped audibly. "That's not… I mean, I'm not… my agreement to surrender—"

"Yes, yes, they remove your rank. It means nothing to them. They never got a commissioning ceremony, but you and I did." Kerrigan cocked her head to the side. "I bet you even gave them the whole 'rank, name, and serial number' deal too. Didn't know you'd be throwing 'service' in there, huh?"

"I serve under duress," she managed to stammer out. Kerrigan looked mollified.

"Don't we all," she replied, punctuating each word with a sharp syllable.

Demeter stood at attention, afraid to move her arm in salute for fear of startling the creatures around her. "I don't have much of my medical supplies," she choked, "but I'll do what I can."

"Good," Kerrigan said, wings stretching ominously. The sound of squishing mud echoed through the valley as legions of her creatures dug themselves from the dirt and creep, glittering eyes surveying their mistress. Demeter's Reconstruction was almost gone, giving way to a waxing impulse to run.

Zeratul prayed she wouldn't. That would spell her doom. She had been brave so far.

"We will begin our attack once the perimeter lurkers have been taken down. The Executor has begun a scouting effort already, and Dark Templar are en route to the main site of attack now. Once the Protoss advance and draw the fire, we will counter from the flank." Her eyes were fixed on Demeter who nodded slowly. Kerrigan grinned. "_They_ know the plan. Just making sure you are up to speed."

Demeter nodded again. "Yes, er… yes. Got it."

Kerrigan sauntered towards her and raised an eyebrow in amusement when Demeter instinctually took two steps back, at last frozen in place as the Zerg Queen hulked over her. "I was a Specialist when I… left the ranks. A Specialist in charge of a whole battalion." She closed her wings in a rush of leathery skin and bone. "Guess that makes me a Commander."

Demeter's eyes were reflecting in Kerrigan's carapace. "Yes… um, yes, Commander."

"You say you're not a Captain, hmm?"

Demeter's shoulders straightened and Zeratul could hear her Reconstruction coaching her to speak politely to her superiors. "I renounced it as terms of my surrender."

"You're a Captain in my ranks. Consider yourself _reinstated_." She glared at the dragoon and zealots in distaste. "Clearly your captors don't trust me. I suppose that's why you brought friends?"

Zeratul mediated as best he could. This situation was becoming more and more delicate.

Demeter sucked in a breath. "I cannot speak on their behalf as to why I was accompanied. Or even dispatched. Or alive." She swallowed thickly.

Kerrigan smiled, a deeply creepy expression. "Why do you think you're here? Were you nice to the big old aliens?"

The Captain thought for a moment. She swung her rifle over her shoulder, watching the creatures bristle in anticipation. "I'm a hostage. Surety for a bargain with the UED."

"Ah, UED, big bunch of bastards. You really think the Prelate would let you run back to them with all this information you've collected on this mission? The Zerg and Protoss collaborating to kill their precious Overmind?"

Her knees rattled once before she got them back under control. "Killing… the Overmind? I… I thought… just the crystal… we're here to get the crystal…"

"The UED has wanted the Overmind since the beginning of all this. The only time they sent aid to their human brothers was to gain information on what the Zerg were up to," Kerrigan said hotly. "Tell me, when did the Confederacy request aid to the human homeworld?"

Demeter knew this. "When Edmond Duke discovered the Zerg were being used against them… by other humans."

Kerrigan's eyes narrowed maliciously. "Yes, and Earth sped them some reinforcements, didn't they?"

"No."

The Zerg Queen was taken aback. "Did you pay attention in Reconstruction? They sent the _reinforcements_, if you can call them that. They sent a bunch of scientists and test soldiers. Not even Reconstructed, not even marginally psionic. Military brats who drew the short straws. Then once they sent reports to Earth about how bad it was _really_ getting—"

"The UED came."

"Yes," she snarled, lips curling into that smile again. "And you popped over with them. What was your mission when you first arrived?"

"Regain stability of our race," she said with an unfamiliar confidence. "Unify."

"Unify. Unify in blood. The UED is off beating other humans' asses about that stupid word. _Unify_," she scoffed. "You're a fool if you think Zeratul will hand you over to those idiots again. They want to chain the chaos of these creatures and you serve their Queen in battle. If they don't hang you for treason, they'll wring you like a sponge for every last piece of information you have. The Protoss won't risk that. They won't let me kill you, but you're dead and breathing."

Zeratul wasn't grateful for the history lesson. Kerrigan had expected too much of her comrades before they betrayed her. She probably expected the reinforcements to be the UED itself—but that still wouldn't have saved her.

Demeter's mind had calmed with anger; Zeratul wasn't sure why that emotion was there. She steeled herself. "They have a plan. Everyone does."

Kerrigan crossed her scaled arms. "Who's 'they'?"

"Everyone. Even you."

She smiled broadly. "You're not as big of an idiot as I thought. Perhaps you'll survive this."

Demeter's face blanched. "But I'm dead and breathing, Commander."

Kerrigan stalked off towards the ramp. "And you're not a Captain, Captain."

* * *

"You planned this."

"Surely, I did not. I never plan to lose an engagement, much less a soldier." Du Galle lit his cigar. "It's borderline treasonous to accuse me of such."

Stukov swept all the papers and pictures off the desk and buried his fist in the wood. "You sent a termination order to her helmet. Skipped the courts and tribunals. You're the only one with that power!"

Du Galle shrugged in concession. "She was not the only one whose termination I ordered, if that makes you feel any—"

"_It makes me feel only rage_!" He stepped away to punch the air, fury overtaking him. "A friend, you call yourself? Is that what you think of yourself to me?"

Du Galle jumped from his seat. "And you, a Vice-Admiral? Bitching at the loss of an _officer_?"

"A very well-decorated officer, whom I was responsible for saving and cultivating—"

"That is not why you are angry with me, Alexei, you are fooling no one—"

"And that is precisely why I expected more of you! You knew what she meant to me, and yet… you did this! Knowingly!" He pointed a stern finger at his superior. "You always wanted her gone. Why not send her to the front lines to die with honor?"

"Because she is the best-decorated officer of her class, you fucking idiot! You said it yourself! If she wasn't a damn model soldier, she'd be rotting on Char like she was supposed to!"

"So you tried!"

"Of course I tried! This frontier—it was supposed to no-man's land. You think she volunteered for that expedition, to be away from her precious Vice-Admiral who kept her away from all the damnations and butchering of war?" Stukov was dumbstuck. "Well, surprise, she _did_ volunteer, at my behest. Why do you think that was?"

Stukov's eyes narrowed. "She had delusions of heroism when she was young. Her psi index grew everyday, her emotions went with it—"

"She wanted it to be _over_. She was successful. She wanted a life, not… not an _affair_!"

"That's a lie. She said the best thing about being re-absorbed in to our ranks was being together again!"

"And once she saw the brutality of the world, she changed her mind. Seeing the abyss open up for you like a hungry dog has that effect on people." Du Galle seated himself gingerly. "Let her go, Alexei. Your wife will thank you for it."

He balled his hands in to fists. "I didn't even get to say goodbye. You could have at least granted me that."

Du Galle shooed him towards the door, covering his desk with ash in the process. "Enough. I hope you are wiser now to know better than to carry on affairs with soldiers who have life expectancies measured in hours."

* * *

In the deep watches of the night, Demeter woke in a chilled sweat.

_Kill it, KILL IT! Fill it with lead, fill it with fire, FILL IT WITH ANYTHING—_

The Long Sleep—it had been years ago. It put distance between her and her birthplace, the long deep black of space, starless in its unbroken tunnel that pushed her out into the galaxy, but she wished it had come after what she found on the other side. After she saw the broods bleed and scream like lost dogs over their owner's corpse.

_You don't dream in cryo._

It seemed she _only_ dreamed in cryo. She'd never had a dream since, not even a nightmare, not even endless recitations of Reconstruction from the parapet of her sleeping mind. In stasis, she dreamed of blue skies and pink straws in drinks with umbrellas, of the six months of humanity she lived outside the barracks before being packed away into the ice. It was such a small force that had left—just the medics and ghosts—and she remembered that only three hundred of them rejoined the UED when they caught up. The smaller ships travelled faster.

She turned the covers down and tiptoed out of the bed quarters. Several of the marines were still finishing their smokes in the barracks lobby below, and she was careful to keep her steps light enough to be ignored. She sat down on the stairs, head in her hands.

_Alexei brought his wife. He knew I was leaving._

It didn't stop them from resuming their affair. As soon as she defected to the UED, he had come running, hailing her to his office at once. He took her on the office floor without delay.

_Demie, Demie, how long I thought I'd never see you_…

She could only smile. If only he knew… but he'd never see it. He was Vice-Admiral because du Galle was the only one in the world who wouldn't take his shit. Everyone else ate out of his hand.

_Why me? Why of all the Starlings—_

_ You're beautiful. Capable. You think. None of them think, Demie. They do._

She didn't think at all. She still had the litany of Reconstruction rhyming through her head at every waking moment, something he would never know. She obeyed it in battle, she obeyed it at chow, she obeyed it always. It was a great relief, not to think. And now she was prized for it?

He wasn't there. He wasn't there when the sky fell in and the planet fell up and the wind was rank with blood of every kind, when metal, phase, and flesh collided in a whirlwind of destruction that ripped reality to its bones, when she lost seventeen men in a single expedition. He wasn't there when she vowed over number seventeen's grave that he would be the last to get so high. He reaped the wheat and burned the chaff, and went to bed wrapped in glory and wine.

He was a leader, that's what leaders do. She was a soldier, she yielded her spoils to him. But it was getting old.

_There is more, somewhere. _

_*Yes, child. More will find you.*_

The thought came across in _its_ voice, that horrible low growl that gurgled up from the ground, like the helpless struggles of a drowning man. She shook her head fiercely.

_I'll forget you. I'll figure out how. I'll forget you and be better for it._

It seemed to laugh back at her. *_Perhaps, little one, perhaps.*_


	5. 05 Belly of the Beast

**Chapter 5 - Belly of the Beast**

_Formation south of Zerg Camp, Char_

She pumped her rifle slowly, in hopes that would make it a quieter process. Kerrigan and the rest of her forces had gone underground, while Demeter and her escort crouched behind a conglomerate of rocks. She knew the Zerg had more sensitive heat antennae than even her visor could simulate—she was depending on any enemy units to ignore her. She wasn't fooling anyone.

"Kerrigan, we are mobilizing," the Executor called over the commlink. "We will alert you when the time is right."

_Reply to him, Captain,_ came the guttural tones in her head. She fumbled with the touch mic on her earplate. "Received, Executor. Waiting on you."

Kerrigan purred, appeased, and Demeter found herself shaking again. The Queen of Blades made a good point—she now knew too much to be released back as a hostage. _Maybe if I perform well, they'll let me…_ let her what, live to serve? Live to serve out the rest of her battle-ready days as a treasonous prisoner? Live to serve the Zerg as little more than a snack?

She should have fought harder against going on this mission. Perhaps that was part of the Protoss' plan, to spoil her for trading from within, or maybe they wanted to drive a hard bargain for the UED. But that couldn't be true—Demeter knew of soldiers who disappeared on calls someday after they stumbled upon information that the UED didn't want to let loose. Alexei had wanted to kill the secretary that discovered them, but she protested; it was _their _fault they had been careless. Punishing the secretary wouldn't be punishing the right people.

"_MOVE! NOW! KERRIGAN, NOW!"_

The order came in such shrill urgency that Demeter almost sprinted out from her cover. Kerrigan's voice came in her head.

_Wait for the young ones to move. Then advance your escort and wait for me at the choke._

The ground shuddered suddenly as the zerglings fought to dig themselves out of the earth. Their eyes seemed to glow with fury and excitement as they hurdled past her, jumping over each other like panicked bugs. Their primordial cries of bloodlust filled the air and Demeter turned her outside volume down lest her eardrums rupture from the din.

She signaled to Orakin and they moved out from the rubble and took position at the strait of boulders where the zerglings had funneled through, and Demeter flattened her back in a crouch against the rock, waiting. The larger creatures took more time to free themselves from the earth, and Kerrigan strode between them, shouting orders to them as they advanced. At last she came to the choke point and ushered Demeter to her feet, handing her a pulsing mass of green flesh. Demeter took it because she sure as hell wasn't going to drop it at their feet.

"Know what a sunken colony is?"

She shuddered. Of course she knew. "Yes. Big tongues."

"Good girl. There's a sunken colony behind the wave of enemies my pets will be engaged with. Break through the line and stuff this down the tongue hole once it retreats. Then run like hell."

The green thing twitched in her hands. "What is this?"

"Bane. Essentially very concentrated Zerg stomach acid. The hydralisks coat their spines in it. It will rupture every muscle cell that colony has, but it will try to throw it up on you as a last-ditch kill." Kerrigan glided past her. "So make sure you run."

Demeter took way too many steps back to avoid the bony wings that glided past, tips smoking as the shrill cry of the swarm descending in to the valley filled her ears. Dumping the bane in to the crook of her elbow, she pounded her volume plate down and looked at the thing she was carrying. She wished there was another way to hold the fleshy sac of bane besides spidering her fingers along the veins.

Orakin advanced and she followed him wordlessly, thumbing up her volume two clicks to hear the mechanical clanking of the zealots falling in to line. The zerglings had pushed far in to the valley but the river of blood and creep they left behind wasn't expanding—the burlier troops were having trouble with the ground defenses and a couple of hydralisks had crumbled into wet skeletons amongst the mud and fluid. The Protoss troops were shaving the far line down with a measured and firm power, and if more zerglings could get in the gap, the sides could connect.

The closest sunken colony was, Demeter guessed, where all the dead zerg and freshly-tilled soil was. The massive holes riddling the dirt all had matching corpses—which seemed like a great reason not to move over there.

The colony was a familiar sight, a knotted mass of zerg flesh that pulsed like an orphaned heart and had a tongue that could ruin your day. She again looked down to the bane. It seemed disproportionally small to kill something like that.

The knot on the horizon flexed, curling up like a spring, and the pointy tip exploded out of the ground in the middle of a sprinting herd of zerglings, sending several flying and one sticking hard in the creep. Its still body chilled her and she tried not to squeeze the bane.

Orakin's voice chirped through her head. _Move with the next wave, human?_

She sucked in a breath, then nodded.

_You go for the colony, I will provide cover fire. The Elect will clear a path to our forces through the dunes and rubble._

She played with her thermal view, turning the opacity down. "Okay."

The troops peeled apart in wide vees, drawing plasma swords and charging compression towers, and Demeter tucked the bane like the smooth taped rocks they would toss with in the barracks and put all of her leg power in a zig-zagging sprint towards the colony, which was pulling its thick muscle back in to the coil. She watched it pump and stopped in her tracks, strafing right, and the tongue shot through the dirt with a blow that would have sent her flying back to Braxis.

She ducked her head to avoid a hunk of dirt pulled up by the furious swipes of an advancing zergling which she hammered out of the way in her run. It rolled its head a bit and shook from neck to tail before bolting after her, fangs spread wide to screech.

The tongue was curling up again and she tried to look up to time it again but she was too slow; it blew out of the earth behind her and sent her tumbling into one of the thumping walls of the arteries' carapace. She banged her head when she tried to stand up and instead just sat in the creep stunned.

The scream of the zergling jerked her to life as it too crashed against the armor, claws frantic. She put a Zipper round through its arm which dropped instantly but it was still trying to get traction to jump on her. She grabbed one of the scale of carapace, knuckles whiting out from the strain, and ripped it out of the colony's side.

The entire organ thundered in reply, screaming a visceral, empty call that shook her to her bones, eyes wide as the tongue wagged in agony. She slammed the dinner plate-sized sheet of armor into the zergling's abdomen, then used it as a stepladder to scramble on top of the pulsing structure. She dunked the bane in the first hole she saw and it hissed loudly; she ducked and covered her ears, before remembering—

_RUN!_

She threw herself off the thing as it retched green slime everywhere, tongue shooting up as all the muscles relaxed at once. It was steaming like a forest fire, and she saw the zergling rip the scale out of its chest and snarl as it sprinted out from the smoking wreckage, the shrill cries of hydralisks now filling in her earss.

"_Oh God, _OH _GOD!"_ she screamed against her will, diving in to the dirt and sludge to dodge a poisin-coated spine the size of her forearm. The zergling had to be on her by now and she swing wildly, gauntlet connecting with something round and small—she punched her thumb through it and pushed in a heavy dose of Neurostim. The things eye sizzled and its other blew out in smoke as it crumpled wordlessly, cranial cavity dissolving. She put her boot in it, squishing in to the creep and screaming to keep her stomach down.

The air around her grew still as a warm splash bounced off her shoulders, coating her armor in a light layer of purple-red slime. It was dark, and she saw the shadow creep over her legs, drawing them in to stand and look up in to distant flickering tongues of acid fire. The Queen of Blades stroked the flow of creep streaming out of what looked like a floating skinned whale and it thickened into ribbed tissue, a limp ladder floating up into its gullet. Her stomach sank instantly.

_No… no…_

The thought seemed to echo in her fear, a beacon of emotion in the chaos of battle. Kerrigan shouted her order. "Climb, Captain. Get out of here."

"No," she said, backing up into the light, eyes fixed on the claws and wings flexing in anger.

"Do not deny me, Captain," she spat in smoke. "Your life is in my hands now, you are overwhelmed."

Orakin's voice pulsed in her head like a conscious thought. _Starling, we are in position._

"I'm not going with you," she refused, unable to stop the cry of disgust as Kerrigan ordered the overlord to tear the ladder and move it, dragging along he ground in bloody, violet tendrils.

"Starling, listen to me," Kerrigan replied, desperation creeping in like cobwebs. "This was me when Mengsk left me to die when the Zerg overran us at New Gettsyburg—I won't make his mistake. Come with me."

She saw it now, herself staring back up at Kerrigan, a ghost beside her, red hair flowing in the wind like the tears down her cheeks. Demeter felt her read the ammo clip—a big flashing red zero—and she held there in the field for a long moment.

_Us._Who is us?

_Starling, are you ready?_

The Queen reached down to her, eyes suspiciously narrowed. "Please, sister, I was there once, let the rescue come. I'm backing you up, finally!"

_Sister?_

But a far echo of doubt still resonated somewhere, and she heard herself radioing for backup on the Braxis soldier, the one with no helmet. Then pain, dirt, a smooth alien head, arm extended, "HOO RAH", and…

_Artanis was luck. This is..._

_Captain, we've gained the air! Fleet is warping in now, recon to your position, transmit!_

Artanis—she instinctively pressed her GPS plate, the collision of her thought with his voice rattling her with a violent shudder. She shook her head at the Zerg Queen. "Air is coming in, go! I'll… I'll fight…"

"Demeter Starling—"

And she turned, sprinting out of the shadow and between rocks that put her safely away from any advancing creatures, though some turned to follow her. She blasted away a mineral deposit to slip into the second lines, where zealots were viciously ripping at a wave of bouncing blood-crazed zerglings. She eyed the back, seeing hydralisks sweeping in from all sides—the hills rustled as their scales and screams filled the valley, battle brewing once again. Reinforcements had arrived.

The two escorts jumped in front of her to survey the field, Orakin coming up slowly from the hills. One grunted in disappointment. "We are outnumbered here. The air support must arrive quickly!"

_The Praetor is doing all he can, I assure you_, Orakin said calmly, tones soothing. _Are you alright, Starling?_

She blinked, but remembered her couldn't see through her mirrored visor. She rolled her shoulders back and pumped her rifle up again. "Yeah. I'm fine."

_Good. Go join your brothers in battle, Elect. We will hold for the air._

Their legs lit up like sparks as they sprinted with thirsty growls towards the fray of flying limbs and plasma. She watched them run and squinted as they melted in to the furious confusion of battle.

Suddenly a strange, white hot feeling came over her and the crippling awkwardness of sudden fear washing over her brought her to a stop—she wanted to rub her temple so badly. There was a voice in her head in words she was hopeless to understand.

A zerg scream echoed behind her and she whirled and fired, relived to see the round fill a chest of a jumping zergling instead of flying off in space like a novice bullet. It slumped into the creep with a splat, and she looked for any others, since they never come alone.

She was right.

The thoughts were Orakin's—one was _on_ him, cackling as it shattered the cockpit with its front claws.

"_No!_"

The Zipper roared against her shoulder as she let out a full charge into the thing's gullet, and it screamed as its insides fried and spilled out into the creep sludge, falling to the ground in a collapsing pile of roasting flesh and blood. She slammed the butt of her rifle into its head and felt the bones shudder beneath the blow, body rolling, as she shoved with all her power to roll it off the bleeding Protoss below.

The cracked shell of the dragoon was leaking into the creep with an ugly hiss but the fluid itself was still pooling it what remained of the holding chamber. She cradled his head in her arms, sweeping the creep and bile off of his face. His eyes were dark, blinking in and out.

"Templar, stay with me," she ordered, snapping her fingers over his face. She found herself searching for a mouth, but there wasn't one to find. She realized then how little she knew about Protoss physiology, how useless all her medical training was, and hoped that she wouldn't kill him by trying to save him.

_It is over, young human. Adun comes for me this hour._

She waved her Neurostim over his crest, watching the light come back into his eyes. "Help me help you. Tell me what I need to do, I don't know a thing about Protoss bodies—"

_There is nothing to know. _His hand closed around her gauntlet. _Let this sacrifice honor me in the next._

"Can you only breathe in the dragoon stuff? The blue stuff?" She snapped her fingers over him again. "Come on, Templar, you gotta stay with me!"

He nodded weakly, and she hooked her arms underneath his and started to drag him towards what was left of his pilot shell. She stood up to kick away the jagged shards of glass that littered their path before laboriously shoving him in the bottom fifth of what remained of the chamber fluid. He weighed too much for her to splash any outside of the shell but once his face and chest were submerged, his eyes closed and he rattled as the fluid rushed back in with a bubbling growl. She spooned more over his wounded arm and his eyes shot back open again.

"Good, good, stay alert," she commanded, and pressed the mic on her earplate. "Orakin is down, repeat, a Templar is down! I'm holding at this position, please _God_, send in recon!"

She popped out the charging lever for her Zipper and began furiously swinging it for a recharge. The dead hydralisk was practically disintegrating in the creep, but the metal and plasma of the dragoon seemed to be holding up. She radioed in again. "Requesting recon at this position! Dragoon compromised, holding until further orders!"

_They will tell you to leave,_ Orakin sighed.

"No, they won't, they won't save a prisoner's life at the cost of one of their own," she barked back.

A vicious snarl came from beyond the bones of the hydralisk, and she shot at it instinctively. A zergling melted into the creep with a dying roar. She jammed her finger back to the mic. "_Don't leave him here, for God's sake!_"

"Starling, I am coming for you."

The voice was calm and thick across the frequency and she sank back next to the dragoon's broken legs. _Yes_. "Hurry, Zeratul, please, Zerg are advancing—"

"Where is Kerrigan?"

"In the air, I wouldn't go with her, she wouldn't take the escort," she replied, her voiced threading with exhaustion. She stuck herself with Neurostim in the throat and felt her senses reorient themselves as her head stopped spinning.

"Wise. Hold your position as best you can."

Easier said than done—

A spike the size of her leg shot up between her ribs and elbow, ripping her med vest but missing everything else. She screamed and rolled out. Orakin's voice thundered in her brain.

_A lurker—run, human. Lurkers do not come alone._

Another spike narrowly missed her, but nicked the side of the dragoon shell and it teetered precariously. She jumped to her feet and circled Orakin slowly, thumbing for her thermal visor.

He was right—there were six of them burrowed out there, two on high ground. Two tongues of spikes were on their way and she jumped out of the way just in time. They were surrounded; she couldn't place herself in any position that might keep Orakin out of the line of fire. She crouched between the dragoon's two back legs, and took aim at the one nearest her, trying to me mindful of the incoming spikes' heat signatures, when—

"AGH!"

One popped right up beneath her knee a bore a golf ball-size hole through the center of her kneecap. Her face splashed in the creep and she felt the familiar sensation of warm blood running through her lips and down her calf. Another line was coming, and she could barely roll out of the way, the pain was so intense. She blinked wildly, clutching her bleeding knee, and heard the excited purr of one of the creatures, which could now taste the blood through the creep. She dodged another line by a hairsbreadth and heard Orakin yelling for her, wordless as she lost focus.

She reached out for one of the sheets of metal from the dragoon legs and pulled herself on to it, collapsing on her back in pain. She felt a series of metallic clicks as a line came up beneath her, but the spikes couldn't penetrate the armor. She felt around for her knee, which was quickly losing blood and feeling, and turned on her Neurostim, hands patting blindly.

She felt the pain wink out enough for her to sit up a bit and pull out her med foam, Neurostim paralyzing the feeling from her waist down on her right side. She twisted the nozzle to the icon marked with crossbones and felt around for the hole with her other hand. When she found it, she fought a scream, and pumped once on her foam, feeling the stuff ooze in to her shattered patella and gel with a sickening crunch. Then she waved her gauntlet over it several times, set the nozzle to skin, and slathered the foam on the gory mess that was her knee. She relaxed as she could see the steam rising from her leg in grey coils of smoke, and shot herself with Neurostim again before crawling back to Orakin.

"I'm hit," she gasped. "I won't bleed out but I can't run. We're stuck here together."

His eyes glowed and he dipped his head under to let the fluid cover him. _I wish I could make my last stand beside you in aid, human_.

"Don't dishonor yourself," she wheezed, pulling herself up on the armor around him, feeling her boots ricochet off some of the spikes. "The Executor will find us both dead."

She pulled out her omnitool and stabbed open the topside of the dragoon armor. "Where does this thing hold the plasma charges?"

_Six canisters are beneath the underarmor. Cut the wires._

"Are the wires doing anything to the fluid stuff?"

_No. Beneath the wires is a pressure panel but the computer sensor is dead. Pry it off._

She obeyed, slicing through the wires and jamming the hammer pliers under a smooth, hammered plate with symbols etched on to it. Sure enough, the canisters were stacked below the panel in one column of six. She pulled out the top three and stuffed them in her jacket.

_What are you doing?_

"Giving them a heat signature," she replied, and shot herself again with the Neurostim. Her body wasn't responding as much as it had been. She stretched her facial muscles in an attempt to get her eyes to focus, and flipped her thermal vision visor up in exchange for a thermal eye. She used her second eye panel for topography.

Another line of spikes zoomed by, rocking the whole shell, and she pulled the first canister out of her vest. "Hope this works," she whispered, and threw it as far as she could towards the closest lurker.

Four spike trails zoomed after it before it could even clatter to the ground and it burst open once it was punctured. The surrounding creep burst into spectacular blue flame, and her thermal vision went almost completely red. Stars winked in her right eye from the sudden change, but the echoic screams of a burning Zerg bounced around the valley and she smiled. "Yes!"

She tried the second one, but nothing happened. She waited.

More spikes came towards the dragoon but not the plasma.

_They've learned. _

"Shit," she said. "One more left… do I try it?"

_Throw it near the first fire and hope it catches._

She tried to aim but it was useless. Her vision was swimming. She rolled on her back, canister in her outstretched hand.

_Starling, what is the matter?_

"I can't see very well," she breathed. "I lost some blood with the knee… need to stay alert… ugh, this really hurts."

Things were going dark on the borders of her view. Orakin's voice made her head pulse.

_Starling, do not fear. The oblivion beyond welcomes warriors…_

"Shh, please, Templar, my head is on fire…"

Faintly, she could hear the sound of wind whipping through the air like silk sheets writhing in the breeze, but she knew the canyon was still. Her gauntlet seemed too heavy to move, and there were a glittering pair of eyes over her, so green she thought she might be sick, and then she fell softly into the cool river of sleep, too tired run her brain and too hurt to care.

* * *

Zeratul pulled the medic's cooling body into his arms, careful to power down one of his warp blades, and shrouded them in darkness. Orakin's eyes glowed powerfully.

_Your timing was excellent, Prelate. She could have used you earlier, if I may say._

_The Executor is here. You will be safe._

_ And Starling?_

He looked down at her; a web of wet blood snaked its way from her nose all across her chin, and her right leg was soaked with it, the flesh beneath so purple and mottled it looked to be rotting off of her body. Her expression had softened in sleep.

_She will fight another day_.

He retreated to the rocks as the scout ships flew overhead, shuttles rumbling behind them, and zealots with their dragoon leaders were pouring in to the clearing. He dropped to a knee and waved his hand over her head.

_Starling. A moment, please._

She twitched slightly, but her eyes opened into tiny slits and her lips twisted in pain. "No Overmind. Just the crystal, I did what I could..."

_The crystal will be ours. This position is advantageous to us. You have done well._

She tried to raise her hand but the pain was too great. "Orakin?"

_He lives, thanks to you_.

She relaxed a little, and he played strings of psi across her spinal cord. The pain became less pervasive and she could open her eyes all the way. She looked out at the troops assembling in the valley and sighed. "No Overmind."

_No Overmind, not for you,_ he conceded. _You disobeyed Kerrigan on her rescue attempt. Why?_

"She wants a sister," Demeter mumbled. "I don't want to trust her."

Zeratul thought about what that meant, and quickly shook his head. He didn't need to think about the implications of it to know it was bad. _Did she tell you this?_

"No, but I know," she coughed. Her corn-colored eyes were brassy as she focused on him, the effort draining her. "You came for me."

_You are an agent entrusted to my care._

They seemed to melt, turning a dark chocolate, and suddenly her head rolled back but Zeratul caught it. "Why are you trusting everyone these days… me, Kerrigan… I thought the Protoss were recluses, didn't trust anyone…"

_We have common enemies, concerning Kerrigan. If we allow the Overmind to re-grow, it will assimilate her mindlessly once again_, he whispered, keeping an eye on the Executor, who was scouring the dragoon remains for his prisoner. He would reveal her shortly. _The UED wants you dead. Perhaps we will have common enemies with you as well._

"Would you serve—" she spluttered for a second but got control of her cough, "—us if we had captured you and they left you?"

How silly. _Of course not. I do not expect you to serve us willingly. Serving is not the same as having a common enemy, Starling. But after today, you have earned the respect of the troops. You would be a welcome ally._

He rose to his feet and began towards the Executor as she fought to stay awake. "You're just trying to be nice. I got poked in the knee and it almost killed me. No one will respect that."

_You saved an already-wounded Templar's life,_ he replied. _You stood up to the Queen of Blades. You captured and held a position while grievously injured and caring for another. Battle is battle, little one._

Her head dropped to her chest as sleep claimed her again, and Zeratul carefully wiggled her helmet off her head to avoid her bloodying up the inside of it any more than it was. Her hair spilled out in sweaty, caked hunks, and he could see one of her nosebleed trails had gone down her back. As Raynor would have said, she looked like hell.

The Executor was about to radio in for air survey when Zeratul approached him, dropping his wreath of invisibility. The Executor was wide-eyed at the mess of a human in his arms.

_Will she die?_

_ No, but she needs attention immediately. Fly her back to orbit and keep her from Kerrigan. The girl has seen enough today._

Zeratul laid her carefully on a loading bed of a shuttle and put her helmet at the foot of her recliner, noting how long it was for her frail human body. He turned to the care attendant with his hand over her helmet visor. _Be sure that she is not separated from this._

_Move her over here, Prelate._

Orakin, from within his new chamber of psi fluid, glowed ferociously. Zeratul obliged him and helped the attendant roll the gurney next to the tank and secured it in place. The Templar placed his fist over his chest.

_I will watch over her as she once did for me, prisoner or no. Adun be with us._

Zeratul bowed, before slipping beneath the cover of shadows and fell back on the battlefield, watching the shuttle rise.

_You are in good hands, Starling._

He was not expecting her weak response thrumming through his head.

_Hoo-rah…_


	6. 06 Behind Lines

**Chapter 6: Behind Lines**

…

…

…

… _Adjutant online. Please insert a data card or specify an information module to be opened._

"Active duty records."

…

… _Soldier records opened. If possible, please select a—_

"Epsilon. Combat medics in Epsilon."

…

… _There are 14 records that match your search._

"With rank Captain."

… _One record found matching your search._

"Display."

_Captain Demeter Starling, first female commissioned officer to reach rank of Captain outside Specialist and active combat fields, was born on Earth and successfully completed a hypersleep jump from the Milkyway Galaxy to the Koprulu Sector with a thousand-men crew. She spent her entire career in Epsilon as its second-highest-ranking commissioned officer and retired recently after ceding colonies on Braxis. Kill stats and mission information are not available for this officer._

"Birth records."

…

…

… _birth certificate found. Loading… displaying now._

"Is this from Earth?"

…_ this birth certificate is signed by Vice Admiral Stukov under United Earth Directorate terms of defection in the post-jump reconsolidation of troops._

"Show Captain Starling's defection papers."

_I apologize, but that information is not available._

_ …_

_ …_

_ …_

_ … administrative override accepted. Re-executing command…_

_ …_

_ … I apologize, but the information you requested does not exist. _

"Birth records?"

… _Captain Starling was birthed on Earth as part of the Starling spawning bond, hatching number two of eight-million twenty and placing in the combat medic program with administrative review._

"Find her record for birthing and read her tank number."

… _Captain Starling was grown in vat number 1336._

Duran stared down at the paper he used to write the number down, incredulous. It was both wonderful and terrible—more of both than he ever could have hoped.

* * *

Zeratul felt the hard mental thrum of anger long before he reached the medical wing of First Carrier—it wasn't enough to keep him from going.

Sure enough, the Judicator was waiting for him, eyes small slashes of orange against his light scales. He was poised to block off the doorway in to the operations room and gave Zeratul a hasty, graceless bow. "Prelate."

"Judicator," Zeratul said in acknowledgement. "If you would stand aside so I may pass—"

"Your prisoner—the _human _you sent with the Zerg Queen," he started. "She knows something. Kerrigan tried to betray us and the prisoner interfered. You must ask her to confess it to the Matriarch."

"Confess the crimes of another? Perhaps you should ask Kerrigan to come forward if it is her you wish to punish."

Aldaris shot his arm out across the door to keep Zeratul in the hall. "You know it too, Prelate, Kerrigan is not on our side and your prisoner spied on her. She must know something."

"Concerning what?"

"Concerning the Queen of Blades. She is not an ally. She wants something from us and she's planning something."

"And you think a scared, low-ranking terran medic in the process of defection while placed in the center of two alien armies discovered the Queen of Blades' plans?"

Aldaris tensed, but relaxed a moment later. His expression was still tight. "You know there is truth past the literature of that statement." His eyes narrowed even further. "She was not recovered with her Templar escort. You met with her first."

This was beginning to vex him. "I slew the creatures attacking her and delivered her to safety. Are you accusing me of censoring a conspiracy?"

"I am not a fool, Prelate," Aldaris snarled. "But you confirmed my suspicions. She told you something while she was lucid."

Zeratul shut his eyes and rolled his shoulders forward with a metallic clink. "She spoke of her fear in defection. And for her life. I will have a word with Artanis once I access her. This should not have happened."

Aldaris let his arm down but the Prelate stayed. The younger Protoss shook his head. "Trusting Kerrigan is what should not have happened. After her crimes… we should finish Tassadar's work and destroy her."

"It is no matter," Zeratul replied. "So long as she advances our goals under our watch, we can be assured of our safety."

Aldaris gestured in the medical wing. "And her?"

"We should have executed her. Or returned her to superiors for goodwill."

The Judicator nodded. "You are wise, Prelate. If only we all could see the world as you." He drew his cloak back from his legs and bowed. "I take my leave."

Zeratul turned in to the lobby of the wing, disliking the taste of a lie in his mind. His ability to think it so clearly and transparently was enough to fool a High Templar—but why was it a lie?

Only killing her. She was a technical non-combatant—UED medics were issued sidearms for self-defense—who healed the Praetor in his downed Scout, and none of those things warranted an execution. If there were some magical way where she could just never have been near Artanis on Braxis, not even in the zone, on the surface, in the sector. She would have wanted that too.

One of the assistants nearby took a glass tablet and escorted him to Demeter's room. She was in a stand scaffold support that usually the hangar cleaners used to prop up zealot armor for polishing, only the whole bottom layer had been snapped off to fit her short stature. She was standing limply in the center of the scaffold, a neural cable plugged in to her right temple, and she swayed softly in its grip. Fatigue and a half-lidded thousand-yard stare gave her a grim air of docility. Her eyes drifted to the pair that came in the door.

The assistant swiped at the chart on his tablet. "Everything is stable but she is still weak. Once we have her brain data we will release her in to your care, Prelate."

"Do you know how long that will be?"

"Soon."

Her voice was week. She licked her lips to speak again. "The cable is humming. Like wind in a microphone, only rhythmic… how can I hear it?" A limp fist with a barely-pointed index finger motioned at her head, where the cable was attached. "How can I hear it when it's not in my ear?"

The assistant softly twisted the cable from her temple and Zeratul saluted with a hand over his chest. "My condolences, Starling. Your bravery saw you to another fight."

She rubbed her eyes with one hand and the other was curled over the lip of the scaffold bracings. "I'll fight again?"

"So it would seem."

"You're going to force me to do that again?"

Zeratul caught her gaze and it was strong, boiling quietly like molten brass. It would have matched her hair if it weren't in such disarray from the week of medication, sleeping, and muscle therapy. He crossed his hands. "We will be reevaluating the terms of your surrender."

She shook her head. "No, no, I surrendered once already. No more."

"Then perhaps you would like to tell me where you want to go from here."

"Return me to the UED as per prisoner convention, deal if you can."

It was his turn to shake his head. "They sent you a termination daemon. Your previous superiors have left you for dead and any prisoner agreement would likely result in your death. Humans do not play by the rules."

"Considering I _am_ one, I know what I'm up against. I'll risk it. My home is in Epsilon."

He considered that. Loyalty was something humans seemed to have in either fantastic overabundance or not at all. "I urge you to consider other options."

"Like working for the enemy?"

"Co-operate with us. Help us form an alliance with your UED, now while all three species converge towards peace." Zeratul was careful to choose his words meticulously next. "As a high-raking officer with many affordances available to such a position, perhaps you know someone who may be interested in speaking with us about conflicts between our people."

He heard it as it rushed forth from her brain, almost with enough power to come out of her mouth but she caught it with a sharp bite to her lip.

_ALEXEI._

_He left you for dead_, he thought back weakly, feeling the words wander. It struck her as a natural progression of her train of thought and she held for a moment, visibly paused.

A deep breath, in and out. "I have reported to several officers who might help you, but you were right; they abandoned me. I guess I have no choice." She swept her hair into a knot and tied it off with help from the aide, who unclipped her from the scaffold harness. "Who are we gonna be speaking with?"

"The Praetor and possibly the Matriarch, if she feels she need attend."

The assistant accepted Zeratul's handprint on the tablet and slid a chip from the bottom, which he handed to the old Protoss. "Human food and medicine will be delivered to wherever you plug this in." To Demeter, he said, "The muscle regenerist should be settled in your legs now. Do you feel comfortable walking?"

She nodded, testing her weight on the heavily-bandaged knee. "Think so."

The aide bowed as Zeratul led the way back to the hall, where she promptly stopped, waiting. Zeratul sensed it. "Yes, Starling?"

"As a prisoner of war, shouldn't I be restrained…?"

"You suffered a potentially lethal casualty in the line of duty to protect one of our Templar. The Matriarch granted you amnesty when the transports arrived."

"What rights come with amnesty?"

"Freedom of movement," he growled, psionically pushing her into a walking gait with a mindful cradle near her knee. She lurched along with him, bare feet slapping against the tiled floor loudly. She softened as they made their way through the crowd of people on the ship, Templar and officers mingling in post-battle inventory. His hand was broad enough to cover the whole small of her back as he guided her towards the lift network. They stepped on a moving disc that whisked them through several long pathways until they arrived at a wide door Zeratul opened with a flick of his neural crest.

"Where are we?"

"Prelate's level."

The doors parted silently, revealing a spacious, blob-like room done in blues and purples so iridescent that Demeter felt like she was in a giant soap bubble. She didn't have time to look around before the Prelate walked her in to a second set of rooms pinched off by small beads of light glittering in the doorway. He motioned to sets of human plainclothes set out on a low table: grey and white weekend pants, grey, white, and light blue collared shirts, socks, underthings…

He felt her stomach turn at the notion, but she touched the white collar, fingers tracking the upper fold. "You had these?"

"They were made. Measurements were taken during medical procedures. A brace is coming soon as well."

She looked at him. "Why are you taking care of me like this?"

He held her gaze, eyes unwavering. "You have been granted amnesty by the Matriarch, which entrusts you to my care until I decide how to proceed. I decided to renegotiate terms with you and the Praetor and you agreed. Your amnesty and complicity earn you the comforts of a warrior."

She put the shirt down and crossed her arms. "Thanks, I guess."

"When would you be able to begin discussions with myself and Praetor Artanis?"

She walked around the room, inspecting it. It was sparse and plain, but had a large window in to space. It was covered, but she could feel the cold through the glass. "I want to be awake for a bit. I was in and out in the med bay, just want to… get my mind going again."

He nodded, and slid the chip in a small slot by the door frame. "Food and water will be delivered soon. I will be on the bridge receiving orders and begin debriefing after that. You have free roam of the chambers here, but you are not permitted to leave this level without an escort approved by myself or any on the battle council besides the Queen of Blades."

"Will she come look—"

"No."

Well, it felt good to know that wouldn't be a legitimate fear. His response time was confident.

"If you are settled, I must excuse myself," he said with a bow, slipping out the door like a shadow at sunset. She relaxed a little as his presence dimmed in his absence, rubbing her knee to check for nonexistent pain. The Protoss medics had done a good job.

_If only I could have done the same for Orakin_…

That gave her an idea. If this entire section of the ship belonged to Zeratul, he must keep a library. That seemed like something he would do as an ancient being of power who understood the forces at play—hoard knowledge somewhere secluded. She walked out of her room and back in to the foyer where there where two other doors like hers, only slightly larger. She ducked in to that one first.

It was a massive chamber within, covered in all azure, the silver crest of the Dark Templar emblazoned on the wall and glass in to space. She stepped in to the arc of the window in to the black, looking out at the blanket of nothingness and light beyond. Across the hull, she could see the closed window to her room, the shape familiar.

_He will watch me, if I let him._

_Don't let him know his enemy._

The quiescent beauty of space called to her and she knew that later there would be an ache to open the window and stargaze for hours until she was tired, just like the last few days of the Long Sleep aboard the _Aleksander_.

But something else caught her eye—a round package on the bed. It was even more familiar than the window.

_Oh, hell… my helmet. Here._

She knew it wouldn't work. She couldn't steal it. It didn't have a working communications chip, and it was on his bed—Zeratul would know in an instant.

_Yes, I would, Starling._

She backed up instinctively and swiftly walked back to her room, curling up under the covers and wishing desperately to see the sky.

* * *

He had to play this coolly. No doubt du Galle was still watching for any sign of residual bias towards revenge for his Admiral's previous call.

"I don't trust him."

"Why not?"

"He is planning something. There are Zerg down there, du Galle, we are walking into a trap." He leaned forward, steepling his fingers. "I fear he wants the Psi Disruptor destroyed to seize the Zerg as his own."

Du Galle looked incredulous. "And what proof have you of that? Has he told you something?"

"He is psionic, more so than any ghost we have en our employ, and he reminds me of the Queen from legend—Mengsk's big mistake. He appeared from nowhere on a former Zerg homeworld. How can we be sure he isn't acting for the Swarm?"

"He has performed admirably in all missions previous. You doubt him now?"

"I tell you, friend, he is planning something. We must hope the Captain is smarter than him if he attempts to defect on the surface."

Du Galle shook his head, reaching for the brandy. "Why are we having so many defection problems with our officers recently?"

Stukov tread carefully. "I have no answers there. But I do not like waiting for Duran to make his move." He put his hands on his knees. "If the Protoss have two humans in their custody, perhaps they have another. Someone we know."

Du Galle cocked an eyebrow over his glass. "Alexei, you can hardly—"

"Open the channel. If she is with the Protoss, we may be able to do this without the cover of battle for Duran to sneak about." He tracked the path of a constellation through the stars. "It is a stretch. But it can't hurt us, and she may be alive and able to inform us."

Du Galle slammed his glass to the desk, ice spinning. "Let it _go,_ Alexei! She is gone. And if she is with the Protoss? I condemn her as a traitor, along with Mengsk and Raynor! Do not try to bring her in to this again!"

Stukov sat back in his seat, watching the condensation pool around his whiskey. He would have to do it over orders, then. He had hoped his friend would help him help them all, and he knew what it would mean to defy him.

_I will take your risk, Demie. It's all going to hell without you._

* * *

"So you eat with your skin?"

"We have no need to eat. We photosynthesize our sustenance."

"So you're big blue psionic plants?"

His look was stern. "Our body systems are more efficient than those of humans. We are able to metabolize light to survive. Even in the Shadow Worlds, light gave us shape. It feeds us."

She nodded and looked back down as her glass tablet, a physiology book open in her lap. "Will acute light stimulate healing?"

"Possibly. We heal in the dark and silence, meditating on the weakness in our wounds until they are gone."

She scoffed. "Humans can't be alone. It's bad for them. Leaving injured soldiers alone is a death sentence, they go crazy or give up and it's over." She turned the page with a swipe. "I felt it too, in the med bay. Only real voices were Protoss, and I hear them, but not with my ears. It was uncomfortable."

"I apologize. I do not think you would have requested any of us as company in any case."

"Talking to you isn't so bad. So far you've answered all my questions."

"My knowledge is yours, so long as you comply with the terms of your surrender."

She bristled at that, but calmed. Just when it was starting to feel like a friendly conversation, he brought it back around to the prisoner thing. "Do you live alone here?"

His shoulders fell into a straight line and he slowly turned to face her. "Yes. Aides and pages are permitted entry but only I reside on this level permanently."

"Don't you have like, a wife and kids and a family and stuff?"

He shook his head abruptly. "No. Do you?"

She laughed. "My family was my platoon, Epsilon. Changed every mission with the dead and what not but the higher-ups stuck around, made friends. You guys don't have that here?"

"Companionship is in plentiful supply. Intimacy is treated much differently."

"Why?"

"We believe it is something to be respected. Families are rare. Our lifetimes are measured in millennia, Starling. We can be selective in that regard."

He parted the windows to see out in to space, the distant stars and planets illuminating the room. She shut off the tablet instantly and shoved it on the empty seat next to her, rising to join him at the window railing. He turned to look at her still incredulous expression.

"Why does space fascinate you?"

She couldn't think of a good answer, so she decided to be honest. "Not sure. Makes me get perspective again sometimes. Feels so small to be one person in the universe, a galactic transplant."

He straightened at that and looked forward again. "You came from Earth?"

"Yeah. I was born there." She gave him a playful look. "Do you even remember when you were born?"

"Long before your kind had any hope of seeing us."

"Oldball."

"Pardon?"

She picked up the glass tablet and placed it back in its spot on the long table before floating out the door. "Going to get a module on medical history. Might be the only time I gave a crap about that kind of stuff."

"Why _are_ you caring, Starling?"

"Didn't know anything to help Orakin. Won't happen again."

"So you plan on fighting?"

"You're going to make me, aren't you?"

He had heard enough of Raynor to know sarcasm. He didn't need her to fight, but her diplomatic skills could be significant in ensuring Aldaris that she was not a conspirator with the Zerg. If only the Judicator could have heard her stream of thought fighting beside those monsters on the battlefield, then he would never doubt her fearful hate for them.

She had read every medical book in his library in the past two weeks. They had a disagreement over her diet which was settled via psi—or, in her words, she suddenly became hungry for the exact food that had been prepared. Her apology came a little harder.

She came back with a data stick and slid it in to the tablet, paging through the opening appendices. "Usually the second-in-command has a prestigious family. Staying within a hundred feet of them is unheard of where I come from. Security reasons."

The familiar but sour thought floated past again, and Zeratul smelled it this time. He gave her an interested look. "Do you have personal experience with this?"

He was not expecting her to flush the shade of pink that she did. It looked painful, from the tips of her ears to her palms—she balled them in to fists and tried a fake smile to deflect any curiosity. "My Major reported to the Vice-Admiral. We can talk about him with the Praetor. But his family lived in a place like this—a whole floor of the cruiser belonged to them just for being his family."

"Did you work for him?"

"Sometimes. He gave me administrative review into the medic program so he knew me."

She felt like screaming. She was so close to saying too much and implicating herself that it made her skin itch. She would be too heavy of a bargaining chip to even pick up.

What would she tell them about Alexei? He supervised her in the medic program, approved her promotion to Captain, and decorated her himself with her first combat medal for a tour of Tarsonis. It was strictly business—always had been.

The scary part is it wasn't exactly a lie. Sometimes it really had been strictly business, all hot skin and stifled moans on his office's four-poster bed. She'd clung to the front two posters many a time as he took her, biting her knuckle to keep quiet, sometimes relishing being thrown on the cool sheets as his fury and desire grew. Only a warrior could survive that kind of double life.

Zeratul sent a loop of psi to straighten her neck in an effort to clear her head. The swirl of murmurs coming from her mind was growing. "I chose no mate but the darkness. A warrior is a poor companion to something so treasured."

She smiled, sly, in weak agreement. "And when the warriors are all alone?"

He glowered at her. "Protoss are not like humans, Starling; there is no capricious system of hormones to push us to such desperation and sexual barbarism that you humans inflict upon each other. Our mating ritual seals the bond for life. It cannot be unbroken by any who walk the physical world, by choice or action. Humans lack the emotional capacity for such things."

"You have the long life to find your soulmate, we get the short flash to mess around and have fun. Can't blame us for listening to genetics. We don't have as much time to be choosy."

"Did you choose someone?"

_Huh?_

"Huh?"

"Before we took you. Had you chosen someone?"

_How does he always ask the tough questions?_

She sighed. "I thought I wanted to. But I didn't." She blinked a few times to spread a sudden surge of watery eyes. "He had a family. I didn't know what to do."

He knew it. He had been right—she was Stukov's mistress. Her merit could have gotten her just as far as sleeping with him did, though perhaps not as fast, but she didn't need the cop out. He re-examined her: she was afraid of his family. Maybe that's why her thoughts were beginning to orbit the ship as a new safe haven, away from the family and intimacy and blanked humanity that she needed to run from.

"I am not confident I can bring you back to that."

It came out as a confession, but she knew it was a sign of what was to come. She swallowed heavily.

"I know. Sometimes I wonder if I want to go back." She rubbed her jawline, frowning. "It would be right. My home is in Epsilon. But they want me dead…"

"Can you think of a reason why?"

She shrugged. "I got nominated for a couple special ops tours, maybe someone said it was too much to risk. People disappear, Big Brother keeps moving, we try to make our piece of the sector work for us. I just never knew I'd be one of them."

It was honest but it wasn't the right answer. The secret would take some time to extract—the Reconstruction had locked up her mind with loyalty, and that was a slow dissolve.


	7. 07 Blood Capital

**Chapter 7: Blood Capital**

Demeter had finished the last medical book in Zeratul's library when the Carrier lurched with a muffled thump—or maybe a scrape? She couldn't tell—and she felt the familiar turn of her stomach as planet gravity and artificial gravity battled through the ship. Her nausea was gone instantly; it never really affected her any more. The last time she had thrown up was when she woke from the Long Sleep, so any fear of getting sick had died long ago. Along with lots of things.

Men, aliens, lots of religion and personal hopes—they were the anchor when she was in space. They had sank through the sky like hot diamonds in soda water, the only bubble of sight in the whole mess of it all. She liked to think she was better off alive for trying her best. It was living out the pain that was her cross.

_You will bear it in silence._

The voice, that helped. Alcohol was a common substitute for Reconstruction but she sang in it her head to go to sleep, and its repeating wisdom could still reach her, even here. Even where Alexei couldn't.

_And you will bear it forever._

She sighed. Wishing that weren't true was one of the fruitless expeditions of her time as a First Lieutenant. She had to let it go to earn her right to leadership. She couldn't be a Captain with a bloody cloud hanging over her.

Roll call came after touchdown back home, so she dumped the tablet back on the bed and pulled her boots on, polish drying over the new scratches. Prisoners were the first accounted for as they were trusted the least.

She waited for several long moments in the foyer. No one came, and the lift door wouldn't open, even when she knocked and pushed a little. She put her hands on her hips and sighed. _What the hell do prisoners do when their bored and curious?_

The thought stuck about as long as she did when another tremor tore across the hallway and the carpet shot up to meet her as she lost her footing—the ship shook violently, much worse than before, and she felt her nose scream in familiar pain as it bounced off her arm, legs flying out from beneath her. No blood—but her eyes were watering so hard she could feel the tears curling past her earlobes. The ship vibrated hard for several seconds and she wobbled to her feet once she took her breath.

The lift door hissed and slid open idly, the disc floating in place like normal though the control screen was out. Was it safe?

The disc wasn't lit. Great. _Now I'm stuck here, unarmed._

She crept into Zeratul's apartments. Her helmet was here somewhere—she remembered him showing it to her, gloating—but it wasn't in plain sight. She tried the biggest drawer on the far wall but the knob on the front was too conical to grip. She wedged the metal edge of her boot under the bottom, and popped it out an inch with a few taps. She ripped the whole piece out of the chest, and squealed when she saw her helmet rolling around inside.

She scooped it up and pulled out the fabric stuffing her captor had filled it with. She could feel her pulse in her head and thanked herself for dirtying it up before she parted with it; she didn't want to see her stupid grin in its reflection.

The power button was already flipped to on but even if it hadn't been, it wouldn't hold a charge for more than a few hours. She sighed, but tucked it under her arm as she walked back in to the foyer.

"Starling."

She jumped and almost spiked her helmet at the Praetor's feet. "What!"

He had come with an armed escort that glittered in the fading hall light. The young Protoss stood in the broken doorway to the network, light skin glowing with his eyes. "There is a situation amongst the Khalai. Please come with me." He motioned for her helmet, and she reluctantly gave it over. It was better than trying to resist.

"Take this. It has a simple commlink and transmitter."

He passed her a visor—the pilots had these since the helmets weren't hands-free. The glass was cool and pearlescent, and slipped right on the bridge of her nose and held there like a thick pair of glasses. The Praetor pulled a mic from the ear plate and she pressed it against her mouth. He shook his head.

"We can only register your voice with vibrations. This is a throat microphone."

"Oh," she mused, twisting it down to curve along the vein in her neck. "Now?"

He nodded, one swift motion downward. His movements seemed so heavy. "The lifts are not operational. Please let me carry you to the rendezvous point." He extended his arms but she shook her head.

"I can go myself. What's going on?"

He ducked back in to the hall with her and they clung to the tiny edge of the lift network, shimmying down behind the other soldiers. "We can brief you once we reach my forces on land. Atmospheric pressure and air content is safe for you."

She was exhausted by the time they finally jumped through a door to the hangar, which was wide open and emptied. The troops had mobilized, end entire hangar deck of them, and she knew just this Carrier had three. She swallowed thickly. _War._

The Praetor was signaling to someone on his own visor. His neural crest was alight with thought but she couldn't hear a thing; it was like discerning whispers but not words and the harder she strained, the less she could make out. Her stare drew his gaze. "We are moving into an invisibility field to await the scout group. Come."

She obeyed and fell in stride beside him. "Scout group?"

He was silent before vanishing in front of her.

"Woah!"

She stopped where she stood, but the troops of his escort marched past, each melting away into the backdrop of the empty hangar.

_Crazy._

She stepped forward and got the feeling of cool sand pouring all over her, a flash breeze in the desert. It trickled down her back like a rogue sweatdrop, and out of nowhere an entire Protoss _battalion_ was parading in the hangar. She shaded her eyes as she looked around for rip generators, like the long spikey antennae on the Wraith models, but found a steel butterfly of a ship hovering over the army with a vibrating halo floating below it.

_Huh. These guys have thought of everything._

"This way, Starling."

The troops parted to let the Praetor pass with ceremonial salutes, none stopping to stare at her. They crossed an arm over their chest and bowed deeply; she held hers close to her sides and picked her way carefully behind Artanis, who had arrived at one of the mobile admin stations. Demeter remembered seeing the ruins of one on some lonely moon, the glass screen smashed to pieces and the spare warp blades long dead, and marveled at how differently the Protoss ran their armies. The idea of allowing petty officers to make live field decisions was silly. Obedience was everything, and orders were final and absolute.

She stopped just behind him. "Are we under attack?"

"Revolt would be more appropriate," the young Praetor replied. Demeter felt a sad dryness to his tone. "It seems a member of the Khalai no longer trusts my judgment."

"Who? Zeratul?"

"Never." His response was quick. "He will be returning from recon shortly. Our former Judicator has taken control of two Carrier groups and mobilized against us."

"And I'm being inventoried?"

He straightened, hand still poised on the edges of the screen. "Judicator Aldaris requested your terms of surrender to him to ensure a ceasefire."

She didn't know what to say, but she pulled something together. "He attacked the ship?"

"We sustained damage to the gravity coils and chose to land under duress. Zeratul left the moment we touched down."

"How long until he gets back?"

_He promised to keep me safe. How can he keep that if he isn't—_

Her question answered itself as he and three of his brethren morphed into vision in the middle of a squad of technicians, who scrambled to avoid the powering down blades and whirls of shadows that materialized in front of them. Zeratul crouched at the forefront and Demeter saw his arm crossed in bow to the Prelate. His voice was heavy.

_Prelate, things are worse than you know._

Then she saw the blue and black creep of blood coming from his shoulder, and his hand clasping his cloak to keep pressure. It wasn't a salute—it was a wound.

She rushed to him, pulling her visor off and clawing the rolling admin station nearest her. There was a blue and white lever on the side with a pump-action throttle; she popped the wand out and pulled the lever several times, seeing the tip charge with iridescent light. If her theory was correct, the light should stop the bleeding and start the coagulation. Then she needed heat for sterilization, and something for the pain.

He didn't recoil against her, but he didn't help her, and she had to slap his hand away to trace the edges shut with the wand. She pinched the scales as gently as she could, guiding the glowing wand in measured strokes until the blood stopped. Then she found his eyes.

"Heat can sterilize this. I know the scale pores need to be closed for the follicles to regenerate. Can you use your warp blade?"

He took a step back and pushed her away, twisting his opposite arm towards his shoulder, and twisting the hot stub of his blade in the cut, steam rising in hot circles. He barely flinched. _His mental control is probably insane. I don't think he felt that._

She rubbed away the dead tissue and ash, feeling a couple more scales come loose. He stood tall again. "Thank you, Starling. It is good to see you safe."

"What's going on?" She said, rising to join him. She came to his chest bone. "The Praetor told me I've been requested to surrender to the Judicator?"

"His mad theory that you are in collusion with the Queen of Blades has gone too far," Zeratul snarled. "He feels even the Matriarch is poisoned."

"That is _treason_," Artanis surmised, tone deep for his age. "To disobey the Khalai—"

"He charges _us_ with treason before the High Council, Praetor," the old Protoss sighed. "Something must be done."

Eyes were on the Praetor. Demeter wasn't shaking, and she thanked her confusion for that. Why the Judicator thought she was siding with Kerrigan… had he witnessed her attempted 'rescue' in the valley?

She tried not to think about it, but it drew Zeratul's gaze. He was solemn. "You will be safe, Demeter. I informed Aldaris Kerrigan did nothing more than torment you—"

"I chose not to go with Kerrigan," she insisted. "I sided with you. That is treason to the UED, why would he think I am siding with her?"

"There is only one way to find out," the Praetor interrupted. He walked over to the pair of them standing in the army, picked up Demeter's visor, and handed it back to her. She curled her fingers around the glass before taking a fistful of her shirt and polishing the dust off.

He extended his hand. "Once more, Demeter Starling, we must ask too much of you. Go with Zeratul to the rendezvous and uncover the meaning of this. The entire army will be at your back, and we will keep you safe."

"In dark, I swear it," Zeratul echoed. She knew she didn't have a choice.

"I want a blade, and I want a beam, plus body armor."

The Praetor turned to his aides, who were already scrambling through the hangar. Demeter had a growing feeling in her head that even though this would be trusting the enemy, it would bring her closer to home.

* * *

Stukov remembered decommissioning Demeter's vat, knowing that meant there would be no more of her. He always seemed to be cresting on just enough.

She tried to get away, he knew. She volunteered to go to Koprulu when word of the alien Zerg reached home and after the awful commissioning ceremony his wife had shown up to. She was already packed away in cryo by the time he had gotten word and he watched the fluid dry in wavy lines across her face, her name and rank written in silver on the band encircling her casing.

He wanted to break her out of there and ask why he didn't merit a goodbye. That's when du Galle reminded him that she volunteered—she wanted to get away.

So he followed her. Viktoria was furious but he couldn't feel that anymore. In any case, she couldn't divorce him out here. It would be another ten years before their bodies could handle a Long Sleep home.

His recklessness pushed everyone away for a while, and even taking Demeter into his personal guard for an exchange. Her paperwork from the alliance came in and she was promoted to Captain—he pinned the wings on her himself—and chose assignment in Epsilon. Another attempt to get away.

And now this. He was going crazy.

Du Galle's voice forced him to focus. "I don't understand this. Why would the Protoss harbor these men?"

He fought the urge to spit, even over the commlink. "I have no idea, Gerard."

The adjutant whirred to life. "Admiral, sensors have detected multiple Zerg broods in the area, no cerebrates present. No current signs of hostility, visuals coming soon."

The map was blood red in the northwestern corner and to the south. Stukov winced. "Should the broods attack, we'd be hard-pressed to hold them at bay."

"I see," du Galle considered. His face seemed more like a portrait, stoic against his library. "It is a risk we'll need to take. Mengsk represents a considerable threat to out agenda and must be eliminated. Captain!"

The face of a young man, eyes hard and hair spiked appeared on screen. "Orders?"

"You will focus your attack on the rebel Command Center in the middle of the Protoss encampment. That must be where Mengsk and Raynor are hiding. We will deploy our own valkyrie frigates and tighten up our air defenses. Vice Admiral Stukov and Lieutenant Duran will provide cover for your forces and ensure that no external threats interfere with your mission."

The Admiral gave him a stern look before signing off, and Alexei gave the order to his Captain to mobilize. His wings flashed in the light as he ran to obey, and he wondered if Demeter still had her wings.

* * *

Kerrigan kept her excitement to herself. The kill was close. She knew.

The troops were calm at least, exhaustion keeping them passive. She waited amongst the rocks and ruins of the plateau, Protoss platoon in siege.

_For all their alien tricks, they certainly were easy prey._

But it was not their lives she wanted, but her plan—Duran had promised her that this was the one, and Stukov had been hiding her until he could terminate the vat. No one had thought to tell Earth to decommission the cloning vat that birthed Sarah Kerrigan. Now she was running with the Protoss. Stukov would piss himself.

At last, the second signal came, and she motioned to Aldaris. "Go ahead. Meet your brother and speak your peace."

Begrudgingly, he stepped forward and his troops followed. Kerrigan blended into the stones, feet vanishing with her wings as her cloaker sprang to life. She followed him silently out into the clearing, where the Prelate and his escort were waiting.

She was there, standing tall with a glowing rod strapped to her back and a long warp blade in her hand, nestled behind Zeratul as his charge. She kept her eyes on her commanding officer. Kerrigan smirked.

The Prelate spoke first. "So you have come, traitor."

"It is you and the Matriarch who are the traitors," Aldaris spat back, zealots fanning out behind him. "I believe that to my last blow."

"Do not bet your life on such treason, Aldaris. Surrender your forces and join us in eradicating the Zerg—"

"I would sooner _die_!" He brandished his blades. "Your fate was sealed the moment your matriarch allied herself to the Queen of Blades! Those of use still loyal to Aiur will never be slaves to Kerrigan and her broods!"

"You will force our hand if you are not careful—"

"She seeks to infect your prisoner! And you, Dark One, are blind to it, to a hostage of battle. Surely you did not think she merits her life after Kerrigan has tainted her?"

"She is _not_ Infected—"

"Surrender her to the Khalai for questioning!"

Zeratul froze, then shook his head. "You know I can do no such thing."

The Queen was vexed, and bristled in spite of herself. She bit her knuckle, and hoped he would bite.

Aldaris let his voice ring with mockery. "You will kill a Judicator for a prisoner? A corrupted prisoner?"

"It is you who is corrupt, Judicator. Your accusations will bring harsh consequences if you surrender with peace, and mortal ones if you do not."

"Surrender Demeter to me, and you will have your peace."

Kerrigan found her in the crowd—she clutched the blade close and stood firm, but her knees were sinking every minute. Zeratul whisked back to nod his head. "She will be safe, as will you if you surrender."

Kerrigan closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. _C'mon…_

"Send her now, or you leave me no choice but to bring you to justice—"

"This fruitless, Aldaris. She is not part of this and came as an accessory to persuade your peaceful surrender—"

"_I have no time for this._"

She switched off her cloaking node and slashed Aldaris' throat in frustration, feeling her senses come back as the blood flew. Black and green gushed everywhere, and the ground pulsed to pieces as lurkers took care of the rest. The place stank and smoked when it was finished. She turned to Zeratul, who came forward aggressively.

"_What have you done?_"

"I just cleaned up _your_ mess, Protoss. Don't be so squeamish—"

"You are no ally of ours," he declared. The strands of neural cords danced like angry candles. "Begone from this world. Never get foot here again on pain of your life and any who follow you. Your actions here will not soon be forgotten."

"Fine. I already got what I want. I've ensured you guys will be tied up in civil war while I can regroup my forces and deal with some _real _problems. But I'll be seeing you."

She found Demeter, who couldn't help but look her dead in the eye.

"_Real soon."_

* * *

"Ooo, brother, this is not looking good," Raynor said, zooming around the wraith Captain's camera. "UED to the South, Zerg swamped to the north and east… sleeping like doped monsters, but still…"

Fenix's voice was strong, even though the psionic microphone. "Fear not, Raynor, you overestimate these humans. The Zerg is our true concern here, that and the Warp Gate."

"Yeah, I know," he half-spat, chewing on his toothpick. "But we might wanna send word to some buddies. Maybe Zeratul is listening, he and Artanis could send in some backup."

"I will send word to the Praetor of these developments, but no doubt he is engaged. Kerrigan has yet to be seen recently and I imagine he and the Prelate are dealing with that threat."

"Just let the Prelate know, alright? Zeratul trusts me, he knows I wouldn't yell if it weren't serious."

It was silent on Fenix's end, and Raynor rechecked the sonar map for the millionth time—sure enough, nothing had moved. Finally, the Protoss voice came over the line. "Zeratul, Raynor and I are holding a position on the surface of Aiur, but the UED has made a sudden appearance near a docile colony of Zerg. If you are able, we have a functional Warp Gate here which we can use to receive backup, if you choose to aid us."

Mengsk's gruff voice crackled through Raynor's earpiece. "You're bringing more Protoss in to this? What the hell, Jim—"

"Shut _up_, Mengsk, your voice makes a zergling seem hot and your opinion's even worse."

A booming storm of a voice echoed in, like rain against his ears. _Zeratul._

"Raynor, we may be able to send a few forces at this time. If the UED is there, we have an informant that may be of some use."

"An informant?"

"A seizure from Braxis after the UED terminated her command and offered no terms of exchange. She has a decorated combat record—"

"She?" He and Mengsk said it at the same time. For some reason the earlier _her_ didn't register.

"Yes, a Captain of the Epsilon Division, Braxis flight battalion Demeter Starling, combat medic."

"A _medic_? Are you serious, Prelate?"

"Shut up, Mengsk, I won't tell you again," he said lurching forward in his seat. "I'm bad with names but I'll take it. When can she speak with us?"

The line went suspiciously quiet. At least Mengsk held his tongue. Finally, Zeratul replied, "We have business to deal with here. Hold fast until I can contact you again."

Raynor crossed his feet on the dash and dug around for a cigarette, snapping his lighter on with this thumb. Looks like he was in for a long day.


	8. 08 Brute Impulse

**08 – Brute Impulse**

**_Low obit over the planet Aiur_**

**_09.15 hrs_**

If there was one thing to be thankful for, it was getting her own room on board the Praetor's flagship.

Her complicity earned her free movement throughout the deck and anywhere with an escort beyond that. So far, the deck had a bunch of open windows to space and screens to news outlets so with some food, she could settle in a while. Agreeing to another mission under Artanis' request… well, he was much more welcoming than Zeratul.

Zeratul had a warrior's caution that resonated with her, but she had healed the both of them now and only Artanis had responded warmly. Then again, Zeratul had disappeared after escorting her to her room with another bow of thanks, so she hadn't interacted with him much. She showered and napped, drying her hair over the edge of the bed, eyes closing as the last warning to stop moving came over the intercom. They had repaired enough of the Carriers for empty warp, and moved aboard Artanis' flagship to make the jump to Aiur—she held her breath as the countdown ended, feeling the sand again but also water, like rain under a tarp, and then the voice echoed again, confirming a successful Warp. Mission time was in three-thirty.

This was a good idea, agreeing to meet Raynor. If he was up against the UED, she knew she could help—but that meant a level of treason so deep, she doubted she'd ever see Epsilon again. However, the inverse could be worse… sneaking off to rejoin the UED with no ID and a non-functioning helmet. She sighed.

_Not a chance._

She slid open her door and walked in to the windowed room. There weren't any bookshelves, but she didn't feel like reading anything after going through all those physiology books. The English translations had really sucked. Instead, she traced her serial number in the breath of her fog on the glass, watching the studded backdrop of space peek between the numbers.

She wondered what her serial number meant sometimes and laughed at how low Epsilon was in _Brave New World—_they were the idiots of the world, and while reading that book she knew the UED had blessed them all with the best genes the labs could offer; they were smarter, more stable, stronger, but less psionic. Many predictably excellent soldiers are better than the occasional super soldier. She knew her psi index had grown as she went through puberty—the water suspended in the air in the shower when she thought very purposefully—and she had gotten placed much higher than those in her birth order, as the first hundred-born were usually the gamble on psionic or brain dead. It was something about how the genes were administered, and the needle not coming to temperature until the first few injections. The terrazine coolant sometimes leaked.

Her hair dried over the course of the hour, and she brushed it several times in lieu of a blower. She touched the tattooed makeup around her eyes as she looked in the reflection. She could change it if she got home somehow, and again traced her number in the condensation.

A distant hiss sounded behind her and she turned slowly, smearing the numbers. Artanis came in, dressed in cloth blues that glowed yellow at the edges, alone. It was strange to see them alone, without their escorts and armor.

He swept her a clean bow. "Your efforts with the Prelate's wound have helped. The scales will grow with time."

She smiled, but made sure to soften it on her face. "I read some of your biology texts. Looks like they came in handy."

He nodded. "I am afraid your next mission involves less fieldwork. We will be giving you command of a Raiders unit upon rendezvous and your information will be crucial to holding the line against the enemy."

She considered that, cradling her jaw in her fist. "Ah, the enemy. I see."

"I know this is a lot to ask of you—"

"You really have no idea," she said flatly. "You and Zeratul both. You would never do what I am doing in my position—"

"—then I must ask why you have helped us thus far?"

She turned to face him. "Ask away. I healed you in delirium on Braxis. You capture me, force my surrender, then place me on the guard of the Queen of Blades. On a mission in hostile territory, amidst your army, her army, and some other Zerg, army—"

"And you fought," he asserted. "Under pain of your life, but you fought and protected. I have heard of your human oaths, to protect and serve—"

"I'm a medic, not a police officer," she said crossly. Her arms mirrored her tone. "You threatened my life and wouldn't execute me. My actions were under duress."

"And Zeratul?"

_Oh._

_ That._

She swallowed. "That was goodwill."

"You asked for him. You knew he would protect you."

It was true. She just couldn't be sure what Artanis would order her to do next. "Yeah. Now he isn't here, and you're questioning me about my treason to… to what, strengthen my will to commit it one more time? How does this end, Artanis?"

She leaned against the railing lining the window, arms still crossed. "Do I go home? Do you execute me, abandon me, swear me in to service?"

The young Protoss was bringing up something on one of the screens. "Talk to Raynor. He was abandoned like Kerrigan, only he kept his humanity. I know not what you seek in the UED—they have abandoned you and shown hostility in your attempted termination, and somehow we are the enemy."

He looked at her directly, a human face and profile hovering on the screen above him. "Zeratul has said this and so shall I: we are allies."

She stepped forward to look at the man on screen—his jaw was chiseled and rough, coated in a layer of permanent five-o'clock shadow, and hard, aged eyes. She felt her tongue cramp in her mouth just staring at him now. She was careful to keep her thoughts nebulous and simply read the words on screen. _Jim Raynor, Commander – Raynor's Raiders, Sons of Korhal, Terran Confederacy._

She nodded. "I'll do it."

Artanis straightened. "You know this man?"

"He's human. Served for those Korhal guys, I had some defection run-ins with them. They're familiar."

"You've defected before?"

"I was sent here from Earth as reinforcements to the Terran Confederacy in their fight against the Zerg. The forces that arrived found this sector in all kinds of trouble, and we joined up with some people to fight until the main fleet came through. The Sons of Korhal were involved."

"This man particularly?"

She looked back up at him. "He won't remember me. I was a Lieutenant at the time." She coughed and nodded. "Low rank to a Commander. Are you coming?"

"I will be leading the air and Zeratul will be escorting Raynor and Fenix to their command. You will be given command of your unit once we reach the administration center."

"Command Center," she corrected. She scraped her hair back into its usual high ponytail and snatched her visor hanging around the banister near the door. "Let's roll."

* * *

Zeratul swung his arm to test his wound and besides the dark spot of missing scales, he couldn't see a mark. The girl's work was good.

Giving her command was his request. Leadership would bring out her inner calm, as it did in him. He knew her mind was a knot and reacting on her trained, sharp impulse would relive her of stewing on it all. He could hear her thinking from far away, a heavy cloud of meditation about her, and when she finished strapping in to her shoes and shoulder armor, she walked over to his station to finish putting on her gauntlets. She gave him a quick smile. "Feeling alright?"

She shoved her left hand in and the spidering Neurostim hand fluttered to life as it settled over her joints. He nodded. "Yes. Thank you."

She strapped in her last buckle and tucked the strands away, checked her visor with her two naked fingers, and pulled the metal stabilizer around her ponytail. Despite her nerves, she didn't jump when a human voice clattered through her ears—

"Prelate, and his friend. Hah."

Her skin was hot, just like before getting a reprimand. Zeratul was already facing him and dragged his armored limb off the prep table. "Greetings, Jim Raynor. I regret our meeting could not be on lighter tides."

"Yeah, we have got to stop seeing each other like this, buddy," and he took a handful of the old Protoss shoulder. Then he turned his eyes on Demeter, and she felt her fingers go numb. "Hey, miss. You must be the medic?"

She offered her right hand, the least bulky. "Demeter Starling, former Captain for the UED," he shook it roughly, nodding.

"I like it. Medics don't usually get so high, but I think it's good perspective."

She smiled and tried to blend it in to her lips naturally. "Thanks. We'll see what it really means soon, I guess."

He snaked a grin across his face. "Ain't it so, sister. Come meet your troops."

He walked down off the platform and she noticed his old model of shoes, the kind that snapped on the front seam, and followed him a little taller. Her armor had seen some wear but she still had the best gear. He handed her off to a grizzled sergeant, who led her off through parade ground.

Raynor raised his eyebrows at Zeratul, who made his way down the platform. "Interesting. You know what you have there?"

It was Zeratul's turn to give him a look. "Something I should know about?"

"Looks like Sarah with blonde hair."

He shook his head. "No infection. Just a medic."

Raynor snorted. "How'd she end up here?"

"Healed the Praetor in a moment of madness. Lucky madness, that it entrusted her to me. The UED sent her a termination order, which I intercepted."

"Now she works for you?"

"We loaned her out to appease an ally, she performed admirably, and now… now this."

"Man, when even you are speechless…" Raynor laughed and spat, replacing the toothpick in his teeth. "You like her?"

"She is stubborn but it makes her strong."

"Kinda like you guys sometimes."

He rolled his shoulders back, feeling his neural strands fan across his back. "I suppose. I am worried and suspicious. It is wise to be vigilant."

"You know, don't think I'm trying to start anything but…" he leaned in, "you know girls don't get Captain. Especially not medics. Either she's the most brilliant tactician the world has seen or she's sleeping with the Colonel. The rhyme goes, either you're 'a fucking genius or fucking a genius'."

"I am aware. It makes her a flight risk. She thinks of home constantly."

"Humans are homebodies. We may do some excellent hating but mostly we stick together."

They traced their way through the throngs and Jim kicked open the door to his bike. He stroked the top bar and put his foot on the step. "If you trust her, she'll behave." He touched the screen to the left of his wheel. "She's flying out now to the turret line."

Zeratul pulled the shadows around him and drifted out of sight. "I hope you are right, friend."

Jim tapped some of the switches on his center panel as he dragged his helmet down on his head. "Hey Starling, how you reading?"

The line was quiet for a second then it calmed. Her voice came over the static like rain through the fog. "High and flying, Commander. Can your Adjutant wire us a scan?"

"Sure thing, princess, just say the word. Hold your position on arrival."

"Ten-four."

* * *

"Sure thing, princess, just say the word."

There was a crackle as she pulled the line out and slumped against the ship's wall. Her knees weren't hammering together quite like she expected but the jelly-like sensation was there. She swallowed thickly. _He didn't remember me. I don't know when I'm going to get my head back._

One of her lieutenants dropped the starboard doors and she gave him the signal for the sweep. His hand was covering his microphone as he shouted coordinates to the Adjutant over the wind from the chop. She pulled herself to the screen over the pilot's window, and waited as the satellites connected. She hung by her wrist clip, slid as far over as possible from the center beam.

The scan dropped in the southeast and the map was lit with red—segmented by an ever-closing gap as presumably two armies collided. She ordered a visual, and it was true—the UED was fighting the Zerg, trying to take a Hive cluster situated atop a mesa—she looked to her lieutenant Dreylek with the commlink. "Adjutant seeing this?"

"Yeah, current orders stand."

"Tell them the UED has valkyries, probably for the mutas but they are still a threat to us," she shouted back.

He cupped his mic again and she watched the live map fade back to black. The computer had tagged structures and the topography and was attempting to extrapolate army sizes and placements—this tech was annoying, and she thumbed for the screen overlays to shut off.

"Orders stand, Captain Starling!"

She didn't curse but she shook her head. _What's the point of ignoring an informant?_

She stepped back into the main chamber and dug the commlink out of her station, jacking it into her left ear impatiently. She got it the second time, and tuned it to the channel Raynor hailed her on.

"Captain Starling, scan picked up Zerg and UED to the southeast. UED has valkyries, air support should be cautious," she recited, hand pressing the mic to her throat. "Copy, anyone?"

"Copy you, Starling," Raynor came back. "Zerg and UED are engaged. Second scan is coming in ten. Hold until then, Captain."

"Received."

She left the cable in and croaked to her pilot, "Take us back behind the turrets and bring the others with you. Lieutenants, make sure all air support is behind the turrets and pull the scouts."

She bent to a knee and put her thumb to the tuner, turning it as delicately as she could, and covered her ear to block the noise in the cockpit. The brusque tone of the static faded to a dull hum as her ear searched the connection, fingers light on the knob. She pushed a little further.

"Alpha holding position, southwest."

"Delta holding, east."

"Gamma, south position, Zerg detected. Permission to scan?"

"Adjutant, set up for scan."

"Gamma, sending cords—"

"_Using south station and routing—sweeping now._"

"Gamma—mutalisks and overlords, colony established, ground troops passive at this time. Orders?"

"Venus, move the air. Gamma, hold and wait on the Captain. Bring him this news. Alpha, prepare for a rescue if needed, evac and invasion."

"Alpha, carrying out orders."

Demeter's eyes opened and she exhaled.

_Valkyries._

She knew it. She switched back to Raynor's channel and spoke clearly, feeling the mic bob against her neck. "They are sending valkyries—air support needs to drop and cover, valks are fast and deadly to anything in the sky—"

"You're sure?"

"They are broadcasting on open frequency to cover the distance. I don't think this UED force is with the main fleet. They are using broken channels, or something is scrambling the signal."

She grabbed the pilot's shoulder. "Down, now. Tell the fleet to follow, everyone puts boots in the dirt. That's orders."

Raynor chopped back in her ear. "But the air… that's a lot to ask. The boys like their angels."

"I like them in the air, Commander, so land. I'm ordering mine down now."

And they obeyed. She sat down to prep to touchdown, buckling herself into her chair. "This isn't a mistake. We need to pull the air."

The line was quiet, then the adjutant crackled over the line. "_All air troops are ordered to ground facing an immediate air assault. Troops mobilize for incoming air forces. Code…_"

And she twisted the jack out, now that the Adjutant was on. She needed a closer cable, or one with some length if she had to get to a turret. The Wraith landed silently with just a jostle of impact, and she jumped down off the ramp with the rest of her guard. The dirt felt soft beneath her steel toes and she swooned amongst the troops landing and marching out into the bunkers near the turrets. _Commanding again…_

One of her lieutenants was managing the inventory at a comm.-station and saluted as she appraoched. She walked over behind the control station and had him do another sweep, and saw that she was right—a dotted red line was advancing on the horizon.

But they were coming in the wrong direction, advancing diagonally, and then the Adjutant cautioned, "_Passive Zerg broods detected in your area, Captain. Please standby_."

She looked at the two lieutenants, who were probably thinking what she was thinking on her mission with Kerrigan—_why me?_

She grabbed the closest one's shoulders. "We can't have air but you know there will be tanks. Figure something out, Goliaths or Ghosts if you can. You, get your anti-air troops and spread by the turrets. Go."

They bothered to salute and split down opposites sides of the platform. She turned back the screen and tapped the closest red dot as it advanced on her position, and before she could look up to see—

A flock of screaming mutalisks careened into the closest turret, which pumped them full of anti-air missiles. They burst into flames and smeared across the ground in grim strokes of purple and black. All of them nose dived into the valley and Demeter sprinted out to the turret, joining the Marines flattened against the back.

"Hoo-rah!" she greeted and beelined to the metal box on the right of the turret base. "We're first in if I see a single bird. Get ready."

She popped open the control panel and searched for the commlink. This handicapped visor was getting in the way of her command. She plugged it in and listened, the line a blurry mess of valkyrie scans and position tracking and order continuations and urges for updates. She pointed her thoughts back to the open channels, and searched for the loud one. It came up after a few turns.

"_Zerg position neutralized, terran formation picked up to north east—"_

_ "Valkyries down, turrets to the east!"_

_ "Gamma, currently holding for Venus retreat!"_

She waited. None of this was relevant. There was a voice she was listening for.

"_Gamma, Venus not in sight._"

"Standby on the Disruptor."

_There._

She turned and surveyed the valley, hand poised to pull free, and squinted to see anything on the horizon.

"Advance and take Raynor's ground—send in Venus after a regroup with Delta—"

Then they came, in an unbroken green and grey line, like ghosts in the high fog, and she screamed her orders. "Target and fire! Pull now, bring 'em down!"

Their engines roared through the dust and the wind washed over them with the dirt and she fell back against the turret as the gale ripped around it. She strained to hear her lieutenant order his forces to tap the mesa, missile commands going back and forth as the Adjutant networked everything together. She turned back out, visor, whirling to profile the battlefield. Smoke and ash were everywhere.

"Four valkyries down! Turrets, fire at will!"

She shook the nearest marine. "Find your lieutenant and tell him to scan for tanks. Just point drones for now, minimal air."

He nodded and dashed off, gun bobbing. She squinted out and saw the wreckage, but no ground troops or any reason to advance hers became apparent. She held her position, visor scanning.

It whirled and circled a curling figure in the smog, and she banged the side of the turret, the clang rousing the lines with quick twitches. "Snipers, ready up!"

She heard the sounds of snapping and check orders go, and she held her fist by her ear. "Behind a rock, we have an advancing heat sig, two o'clock from east direction, trigger and hold."

It slithered forth from the fog, a single hydralisk and though the snipers rustled, she didn't give the mark. It dragged itself through the valley, slobber tracking across its chest carapace, and then she saw the rest of them—the like spiders and preying mantis herds, they spilled into the valley, and swung her arm, hearing the snap of thirty sniper rounds. "Fire at will! Boys, run hot and hard, _hoo-rah!_"

The snipers were punching out rounds as the first wave fell in a crippling twist. The marines had tapped their stim rings and went barreling into the canyon with feral cries of "_Raiders ride!_", and the pitter-patter of gunfire filled her ears as she ordered a flyover for tanks.

She directed the rest of the med teams into the valley before rotating her Neurostim to its base setting and jumping up after her second lieutenant onto the leg cleft of a Goliath and clipped in to the ring as the squad moved out. She scanned the battlefield again—the Zerg were mostly handled, few injuries, and spotters were holding for an advance. Her lieutenant tapped her arm. "One tank found on the mesa with limited vision. Flyover can reach, awaiting your confirm."

The target on her visor had dropped as the last of the hostiles fell off screen. "Get it and return immediately, no inventory."

He repeated her command and put his hand back on the railing. She waited for the Goliath to slow down at the foot of the hill as the army jolted to a halt, and he helped her down from the ledge. "And here?"

"We inventory, then we go back to the turrets until Raynor says otherwise."

"Ten-four, I'll start roll."

The Goliath sergeant saluted on his approach, swinging down from the cockpit to finish his gesture. She waved him off. "All accounted, I guess? We barely moved in position."

He nodded. "Yes, ma'am. We'll hold and give our report to Lieutenant Dreylek."

The troops were trudging back to the hill, some bloodied, but no casualties. The medics were receiving everyone for roll and she crossed her left arm across her stomach, using her other hand to hold her visor still. She scanned the valley beyond, but the ground was warm from battle and the image hadn't updated since the inventory. _Zerg, and one tank. Bite-sized chunks… or bait?_

"Where is Dreylek?"

He was overseeing the troops file through the checkpoint, advisors scanning their ID cards as the lines split for the med tents and parade ground. He looked up when he heard his name. "Captain?"

"Drop another scan towards the Zerg. That tank may have been a lookout."

"Received. No update from the sky yet, Cap."

"Fine. I just want that scan."

He tapped his comm.-switch on his helmet and began the sequence for a comsat sweep. She waited for the last of them to drop into formation and tried to be patient, popping the commlink jack from the checkpoint drone into her visor. It was mostly quiet as the final commands from inventory wrapped up. She muted it when the scan came through on her left eye panel—clear, except for a sliver of red in the far left, or northwest. She overlayed it with the topography scan, and it was situated on the far thrust of another mesa, distant in the valley. The tank had definitely been watching the Zerg there. She switched back to the commlink.

"Gimme some muscle. Three Goliaths, hey Sergeant!" she called over the chatter. "Send me your picks for scouting."

"Boys on their way, Captain."

She snapped the cable out and shook her head out, and that's when she heard it—a low-pitched whine coupled with the distant rumble of…

_Engines._

She winced.

_And I just moved all of us to open ground with no air cover._

She jammed the cable back in to hard she thought it might click against her skull. "All ground troops are to sprint return to the turret line _now_! Goliath teams wait for a scan, listen to the engines—"she fumbled with the tuner before it clicked to the proper channel, "Adjutant, we got valkyries on the wind, marker and permission to engage—"

The army had rotated to target whatever was coming through the darkness and the three units her Captain had marshaled for her arrived when the Adjutant hummed back, inhumanely calm. "Orders stand at this time, Captain, but you are always permitted to engage enemy forces in self-defense. Please continue reporting your status, Captain Starling—"

"I'll hardwire to Raynor if I have to, Adjutant—"

The words died in her throat as she was blown off the leg of her escort, metal flying, harness still strapped in place. The entire limb had been torn from the chassis in a flurry of stray sparks and whipping ripped cables, and it smashed into the troops behind it, dragging Demeter through the ramparts. Her vision went black for a second, then her head bounced off the ground as everything ground to an agonizing halt.

Voices swam through her head, some digital and some not, but all screaming. She blinked a couple times and felt her legs tingle like she had sat on them too long. From what she could see, they were attached to her body, but she had been folded lengthwise at her waist harness, and the breath hadn't yet come to her again. The voices seemed to keep her from inhaling—their panic was suffocating.

"Captain Starling is down—"

"Diving! It's diving! Move!"

"Your C.O.—"

"_MOVE!_"

The earth shook violently around her and she rolled in her harness as the Goliath leg fell flat from the rubble around them. Her stomach screamed as she rolled, skin pulled raw from the impact. Something must have shot off its leg. She shouldn't have been wearing a bright green Captain's marker in plain sight.

The pain put her back in her senses and she dug for her thigh knife with her gauntlet hand, the Neurostim canisters still untapped. The arm and finger pieces had been completely destroyed and if it weren't for the hand cage—all that was left clinging to her bruised hand—she would be minus an arm right now. The stray pieces caught on the craps of her vest and she shucked the ruined thing off before slicing the harness restraints with a couple sloppy strokes of her knife. When it was done she fell spread-eagled on her back, head swirling with the kindlings of a migraine, and took a deep, rib-aching breath that seemed to make the colour come back into her sight.

The still air crackled with the sound of cooling metal and melting fiberglass. The voices were gone, smitten along with the rest of the troops who were little more than scorch marks amdist the rubble. She brushed the ash off herself and managed to draw herself to her knees, but her ribcage ached and began to feel hot as the first striations of a bruise rose to the surface of her chest. The body armor had torn like paper against the metal and plastic limb. Her visor was cracked and burnt—she'd have a nice line across her forehead for falling on it.

The downed valkyrie smoked like a chemical fire, green at the base but full of thick grey smoke that billowed out in huge pillows, a column of it spilling out of the tail and wings, ammunition rolling away from the wreckage as per safety design. It wouldn't explode… but it was already too late.

The pilot was slumped in her chair, blood in her lap and all over the floor, a shard of glass pinning her sideways in the side like a broken butterfly. Demeter knew from where the glass was that all the speed and tech in the world couldn't save the poor woman now. She stepped up on her right foot and tumbled, not even feeling the pain that forced her legs to quit. Another nosebleed would teach her to fix herself before others.

She popped out a Neurostim canister and twisted the emergency ring until it came loose. The canister depressurized with a squirt of steam and the familiar smell of olives and iodine wafted through her fingers. Each canister's lid doubled as an injector and she popped the skin tip on, then jammed the makeshift shot into both kneecaps. The muscles there shifted under her skin as she pulled each shot out and her knuckles tightened around the canister, going white as she ordered herself through the sting. The second poke was the hard one; she had to find bone and deliver a full dose to each one.

It wasn't so much painful as excruciatingly uncomfortable. The bits of detached floating bone were dissolved and reabsorbed into the muscle, which didn't hurt if they were small, but the place where flesh and bone met would get a hot bruising sensation as blood tried to flow into arteries that were now being laced to her skeleton. She knew she would pay for two whole doses of Neurostim shot directly into her body. Tomorrow was going to be interesting.

_Yeah, like I needed to have my legs broken to believe that._

After the pulsing in her toes subsided, she tested her weight on the other foot, and rose to stagger over the closest Goliath corpse. It was a long, gracelss stagger to the downed ship, but she made it, tumbling across the wing with a triumphant hitch. She clambered up and over to the cockpit, wedged what was left of her gauntlets under the rest of the cockpit window and shoved, pushing the entire rig off the top of the plane, which was smoking a little less now. The chatter of the pilot's open channel echoed through the ruined plane.

"_Ships down-sssszzzhh-down—engaged—oooiiiiiifffhhhh—Vice-Admiral order, do not disobey-ooosssdddjjuuuuuuhhhh—hold—reporting in, hostil—ssszjjjjfff-"_

It wasn't the bruise that made her choke on her breath. It was the voice, the call of—

She had to try.

She dug through the steering system, looking for the commlink, and found they green cable still plugged in the back of the pilot's helmet. She twisted it free and tugged for slack, sliding down the ship to the wing. It clicked in place with a clean snap. Channels popped up on her visor and she scanned, patience coming to her now, of all times.

His voice ran clear in her ear and she winced, thumbing down the volume. "Captain, regroup and advance without delay, backup is inbound and due for touchdown—Delta, return home, recon is returning home—"

She jumped at it and pressed on her mic. "This is Captain Demeter Starling, requesting recon at current position, transmitting," she said as fast as she could as she broadcasted her frequency to the open channel. _Oh, man, this is stupidity. Open channels are making us all crazy._

The connection hummed and she closed her eyes. _Please._

The silence splintered with the static. "Pick her up. Scramble—"

She lifted herself to the ground, hand still pressing the cable in. "Roger. Flying hard, Vice-Admiral, gonna make contact—"

She swallowed and coughed dust, hearing herself in her ears. "Anyone copy?"

It was quiet, and she repeated her request when a gruff voice interrupted her. "Captain Starling, this is Alpha Captain, our task force is approaching your position. Assume recon protocol and step away from any wreckage, we will be touching down in—"

"_Zeratul, I'm on my way! She's in deep—"_

Her heart froze in her chest.

"Raynor, repeat. Starling is mobilizing?"

"She's just broadcasted her position for recon—moving to the far turrets now!"

The Protoss did not reply, and the line succumbed to the squabble of superior officers planning to inventory her squad. The human voices were the last thing she wanted to hear. He was coming.

_No._

_ Not Zeratul._

She pressed her mic again and called to the Captain. "Step on it, hostile forces are advancing and I'm updating my position towards you!"

Her heels turned up the dust in her path as she sprinted away from the trees and rubble, feeling the cable go taut. She squatted at its full length, reattaching it with a click. One of her lieutenants was ordering a retreat; anything through the mist was either her doom or salvation.

"Starling, report."

She ripped off her visor, letting it drop to the earth with a crack, and ran free of the tether as fast as she could, the voice now coming over her thoughts.

_Starling—Fenix, find her._

"No!" she screamed, and felt the wind push her flyaway bangs back against her head and she closed her eyes, the shadows and deafening sound of spinning blades filling her ears. The sensation washed over her like an orbital sunrise and she could hear laughter through the barrage of wind. It might have been herself, for all she knew.

The lift foot came down and she didn't even look up to see where it went, she just buckled her belt into the harness and jumped up on the ladder. She felt them lift off and the hoist started, jostling her knees with a nasty snap but she didn't let go, shading her eyes as she looked up to the approaching edge of the Wraith. Two legs were dangling over the side and a head was peeking out to direct the pulley, and her ponytail whipped violently across her face before she see any more.

"Shield for fire!"

She wished the line would go faster but she was stuck suspended, until finally the top node connected with the side bar, and she grabbed the first hand she touched, vaulting up into the ship, cheek skidding across the tile when she spilled gracelessly inside.

"She's in!"

She scrambled to her feet and let the officer guide her to the window buckle, strapping one wrist and her belt in to the railings. She curled her hand over the steel and looked out at the advancing line of Raiders, holding down their weapons. She squinted to see where they were staring—

At the forefront of the army, now visible as the ship flew out, stood the old Protoss Prelate, blade extended to halt the oncoming assault. His eyes glowed a deep blue, a bruise against the backdrop of Aiur. She tried not to hear his voice.

_Starling—_

The Captain shook her to life. "Demeter Starling? Are you alright?"

Her head bobbed madly. "Yeah, I'm okay. Where are we going?"

"To the Vice-Admiral's bay, southwest. Do you have your helmet or ID?"

"They were taken from me per terms of surrender. My defection was sort of sporadic."

He fell back against the padded walls of the ship. "When were you taken?"

"Maybe a month ago? On Braxis, holding a blockade. I was a Captain in Epsilon," she recalled. She didn't have the breath to say the rest.

"The blockade on Braxis ended three months ago, Captain, and Epsilon went to Tarsonis," he replied with a snarky grin, and she closed her eyes, knowing Alexei would never let her sleep. Tomorrow was going to be interesting.

* * *

Jim could only imagine—and he didn't want to go through that again.

Zeratul came in with the retreat in full view, not bothering to hide amongst the troops creeping out of the valley. He rolled his bike up next to the old Protoss and juiced it a little to keep pace. "We may have some Zerg problems—"

"I know. I saw the scan."

His response was calm but Raynor knew better. "Did you see her?"

"Yes. Dragged into a Wraith, last saw her signal moving south, well-armed."

"You think he took her back? The Vice-Admiral?"

"I think he intercepted her broadcast and speed was on his side."

"Not to mention the Zerg, who went berserk," Raynor quipped. "An entire Hive mobilized on her and she missed it by seconds. A scan would have scared the life out of her."

"Perhaps the rescue was timely then," the Prelate conceded, unbuckling his armor. "When can we warp out?"

"I'll check with the Praetor but we've been ordered to parade at the gate, so I'm guessing soon."

Zeratul nodded and shucked the last of his shoulder armor off on a tray, pulling his Prelate's robes about him, warp blade still humming. "My fleet will return to the sky. I will finish what this Vice-Admiral started," he said, eyes on Raynor, "He may not let her live. I will see to it we change that."

"You really think she was taken under duress?"

He stopped.

"Look, buddy, I'm just—"

"You think she left for Vice-Admiral?"

"It's a possibility. Devil's advocate here."

That was not a pleasant thought to parse. She had been so conflicted. Certainly this is not what a cleared head had granted her, a vision back to someone she wasn't certain wanted her anymore. He shook his head slowly. "If she is, I doubt she will stay. For now, travel safe. Give Fenix my regard."

The old Protoss split from the path and began climbing the ramp back into _Void Seeker_, shadows and cloak tails flying like dark flags in the clouds.


	9. 09 To Bury The Fallen

**09 – To Bury The Fallen**

Demeter lay suspended in the black and silence, a starless space, but it was the first splash of serenity she had seen in months.

_Months…_

The quiet gave her mind to think. If the Captain was right and three months had passed—Epsilon moved to Tarsonis, completely extracted from Braxis—and the Vice-Admiral was commanding a surface fleet on Aiur? What the hell was going on?

Tarsonis was a ruined Dominion planet, fallen to the spare Zerg they had attempted to contain there, but the UED had kept research lab active there—Alexei had been obsessed with them and she specifically avoided assignments near the galactic fringe. Epsilon had been the capital force in capturing Boralis and, despite the pick far from Alexei's research out in the deep reaches of space, she suffered reporting to the Admiral himself, not fond of the personal strain she put on his subordinate.

She served hard and long and true, pushing in with the front lines that took the Command Center, screaming the nuke drop order herself as the Dominion heralded its surrender. Du Galle had no choice but to commend her, and give her the full command of her rank in Epsilon. She neutralized the nuclear facilities on Korhal before relocating her forces back to Braxis, upholding the blockade her Vice-Admiral ordered from across the galaxy. It held for months before she was taken, and now he had extracted them back to Tarsonis.

Then to Aiur?

That thought trembled a light remor of pain through her mind. She winced, trying to shake it off.

_It doesn't make any sense._

And a violent cough split her peace with the wet hacking of her lungs tirelessly squeezing, and she felt her eyes burn and legs tingle madly, pricks of pain lighting up all over her hands and elbows, and the crazy jumble of shouting voices hammered in her ears—

"Kill the cough, put her down!"

"Bulb, now."

"Bulb."

She struggled against whatever it was pushing against her teeth but her nose closed and she had no choice, cough opening the way for something plastic—then fluid that tasted like salt water, then two hands shoved the air from her lungs as the pipe sucked a huge glob of coagulated muck from her throat. She felt some of it rush up her nose but it was open again and someone was swabbing her face clean and she spat the sucker bulb out before someone pushed her head back down to the table.

"Gimme a strap! She's—"

"We can't dope her, the Neurostim has done enough—"

"Fluid drip now, stop the fever."

Her arms were cold. She relaxed a little, the tremble of a cough building again, and she wished for the darkness she had fallen in before, even if it was the peace of…

"Flatlining, gimme some blood, and a jolt—"

"Charging, we need plasma to mix her type, take a reading—"

"Move for the jolt."

"Sticks. And—clear."

Darkness. She sighed, smiling.

And she woke in the still of the chamber, arms freezing where the fluids moved through the cleaning machines, returning the spun and now room temperature blood to her ever-cooling body. It kept the fever down for sure.

The digital motion of the monitoring machines around her made her miss the simplicity of her Protoss battlements, the cables and wires running up her nose, in her arms, down her spine, keeping blinking tabs on her brain waves and vitals. She wondered if Alexei was watching.

Someone coughed to clear his throat, a deep but muted cackle. "Good evening, Captain Starling, please don't be alarmed."

She didn't bother looking at him. She was watching her psi index readings, which were displaying four 10.2's. Had she a clear mouth, she would have been slack-jawed.

_10.2._

_ Huh._

Then the man materialized from the mist, but his skin was only slightly lighter than the shadows unfolding around him. His eyes were bloodshot, but brown, more chocolate than the gold Rhett gifted her with. He smiled, lips thin. "How are you feeling? Tap your had once for you good, two for—oh. Excellent, I'm glad to know. Your Vice-Admiral will be, as well. He had been aching to see you."

He came forward and the oscillating green light from her heart rate shone in blocked patterns on his cheeks, which dropped into a frown as he settled at the foot of her bed. She felt him long before the pressure of the blankets pulling across her feet registered it and she sighed. It was a familiar sensation, the one that happened when the Specialists came in. Psi-heavy ones just ballooned it like smoke.

_Well, that explains the 10.2. Still probably just a 2.4 medic._

She pulled for slack on her oxygen line to look at him, and he rubbed the knee he had propped beneath him. "I'm sure you have a lot of questions, but just a medical report: you were just detoxified of a twelve-fluid ounce dose of Neurostim, and it was extremely successful. No nervous system or endocrine system damage at all but you did get the pneumatic cough when we couldn't cool you fast enough, hence the dialysis. It shouldn't be too painful with the morphine, now that you're clean."

The cough wasn't the worst she could have gotten—she had put down a couple colics before from overdoses and those left you with permanent kidney damage, and adrenaline was what ran out to win the wars. Sometimes to save your life you give up the rest. She'd take the cough.

"We have a lot of questions for you about the events stemming from your termination that so upset your dear Vice-Admiral. Your affiliation with the Raiders is interesting as well. But perhaps the most captivating of it all is what happened when you hailed us on that open channel, Captain Starling."

He twisted to face her directly, eyes intense and seeming even more deeply red as they narrowed in solemnity. "There were several encampments of passive Zerg idling around the battlefield. When they heard your voice, Starling… the Zerg _responded to your call_. Can you believe it?"

She couldn't move a muscle in her face through the relaxant and there were too many drips on her to bother trying to pull it out just to shake her head. She couldn't consider that. No more accusations of treason. It was unbearable.

_I didn't know. I didn't call to them, I just hailed for recon—_

"They heard your voice, not your words, child. It's as if they remembered you…"

She couldn't wince but her vision blurry as she closed her eyes, neck trembling. _That's impossible,_ _I've never been to Aiur before—_

"They were searching, waiting for you, and when you called, they ran," he said, his tone poetic as his smile turned to pity. "You met them before, and they missed their Queen… tell me, Demeter, how far will you run from your brother and sister? Just as they were searching, so have I, and, to think, the Protoss had sheltered you all this time…"

_Zeratul was a friend. Is a friend. Good will come of that, Alexei will see—_

The psi monitor beeped in disruption, a slow thrum as it blared over its threshold, now showing a steady red _12.8._ Duran turned back to face her, drawing himself to the door frame. "Alexei is blind, you will see. You are meant to see, the Protoss, firstborn of the gods, knew it, and soon—we will come, Demeter."

Black, endless black, but she wanted a foothold, somewhere to anchor herself, mental horizons doing a few revolutions as she felt the echo pulse, but this time in the familiar chime of warm steel through the air. She let is pass over her and she slowed, feet orienting below her and blood calming as the frantic voices from over her bed faded. It sang like a vibrating bass drum and she called in return, a sad, high cry of something she wished she had never done.

_Zeratul… I made a mistake._

* * *

Zeratul tracked Stukov's fleet to open space above Aiur, where they gathered formation for warp; he trailed on the beta-waves of their jump, following them through hyperspace like a virophage in the wind. But he had not been the only one.

Across the quick jump, the fleet spilled into the waiting orbit of a thick, frozen rock studding the sky through the metal loops of settlements and ruin on the surface. Stukov had returned to Braxis—his Admiral in pursuit.

The UED had picked the Protoss up with the scan of Alexei's fleet. The arbiters had powered down the rip fields to make the warp, and du Galle hailed them after Zeratul ordered a fan-out in orbit to watch Stukov's landing.

His human voice was heavy, an accent on his tongue the Prelate hadn't heard before. "Identify yourselves immediately, Protoss!"

Zeratul punched the screen to bring the Admiral's profile to the front. "I am Prelate Zeratul of the Khalai, in pursuit of Vice-Admiral Alexei Stukov, who is currently detaining a complicit agent he intercepted on Aiur—"

"Aiur?"

"We followed his fleet via warp. He abandoned his efforts there following a massive swarm of Zerg on the surface position."

The line went quiet for several long moments and Zeratul waited on giving the order to break atmo. At long last, the Admiral's live stream appeared on his screen; his face was blank white with a beaked, skinny nose, eyes like angry bees, and peaked hat pinned on his head. He looked like a leader, but not a warrior. "We believe at this time the Vice-Admiral has disobeyed critical orders intended to be carried out there, engaging two enemy systems while on a recon mission with no orders for aggressive force—"

"I can confirm, as a member of the units he fired on. He took an injured Captain stranded out of position."

"A Captain? From the Dominion?"

He tried to speak as quickly as possible but the hesitation washed over him, a strange thing. "A… complicit agent with my forces. Abandoned by her former alliance—"

"_Her_?"

Zeratul should have brought Raynor, but the best he had was Fenix, whom he hailed silently from the bridge. He was better at dealing with humans.

"Prelate, are you referring to a Captain Starling, UED Epsilon, medic first rank?"

_He knew_.

"Yes."

The Admiral visibly sighed, rubbing his temples. "It is as I feared. Alexei has gone mad. Disobeying orders with an entire battalion, warping to Braxis after kidnapping her…" He straightened. "We are planning to engage on the surface. Teams are breaking ground now below your orbital position. If you wish to recover your _agent_, we shall send you our coordinates."

"We have your leave to depart with one of your former Captains?"

His face did not change. "We sent her a termination order. She is no longer a citizen or soldier for the United Earth Dir—"

"Are you aware of who she is?"

"Are you, Prelate?" The man frowned, eyes dark and deep with purple wrinkles pixellating on screen. "She is a siren, and she has drawn the Vice-Admiral in, despite her best efforts. It is not the first time we have had to separate them."

He shook his head, chuckling to someone off screen. "They are like children. Children with far to much power at their disposal."

Zeratul tried to parse what that meant—the Vice-Admiral had indeed kidnapped her after discovering she was still alive. No doubt the termination had been his superior's idea of finalizing the separation.

_She must mean a great deal to him—or he has lost his mind. Or something else is amiss here…_

He breathed deep to listen to waves of psi bathing everything in their soft hum, and patiently sifted through the layers. Perhaps there was a chance she was listening.

_Demeter Starling._

He waited.

Nothing.

Long moments, but nothing.

The Admiral broke his trance. "Prelate, you are free to take her if she defects to you. As it stands, we hold no political grudge upon her discharge. My lieutenants will be in touch."

And the voice came, thin as glass but just as clear: _Zeratul, I made a mistake._

"Admiral," he countered, waiting for more with a stalling sigh—

_Duran knows about me and Kerrigan._

"The Zerg are a threat here," he thought aloud, vibrating as he spoke it back. "You have an agent Duran?"

"He is on the surface in pursuit of the fugitives. He will ID their location and advance when we break in."

"He has information relevant to the Zerg—have you encountered any in this sector?"

"There are passive broods in the enclosure we have tracked them to—"

"We need to extract them both immediately."

* * *

Stukov ordered the warp once Demeter stabilized, her vitals on his touchpad at every moment, monitoring her brainwaves as they oscillated in and out of dreams. She was lucky to be a clone and have spare parts available in these labs—truly, a soldier returning home.

Her soldier's welcome was a morphine IV in the arm and a heart-lung machine as she was opened throat to belly to replace her spleen and two ribs, injuries she missed from the Neurostim high. She had double shot herself to spot-heal two broken legs from her fall, and those had healed mostly fine, her ankles needed a little work, but the real damage was the toxicity from the serum; its regenerative properties were meant for diluted, spaced application and injection into the marrow could cause nitrogen bubbles in the bones. She had been sedated, purged of her toxic lung pneumatics, and left to recover from her surgery under a heavy drip in the decompression chamber. The warp was probably just a gentle tap in her sleep.

Sure enough, she woke when they broke atmo, but went down again, no doubt with force. The toxic coughs could tear lungs, but she had dodged the fever. That was something to be thankful for.

The bridge doors whisked apart, giving way to the bridge Captain and Lieutenant Amaro, who both stopped to salute upon sight. He waved them off. "At ease, brothers. Are we ready to proceed on the surface?"

"We have located a safe spot for the Disruptor and can move it in place at your will."

"Do it immediately. I will follow with our siege forces and set up a perimeter, then we can look for resources. We can speak with the Admiral once we are established."

"What teams shall I call?"

"Alpha and Zeta for now, and bring a heavy escort to Captain Starling. She can't fight, but I want her to see. She held the blockade for the longest of my subordinates," he excused himself, "so she will see the fruits of her loyalty."

They nodded off to obey, and he couldn't wait to show her—she would understand, she always did. That's why she volunteered for his blockade, a chance a home again, just to be snatched, then returned. He liked her in this habit of returning to him so freely.

* * *

Zeratul could still hear her last broadcast floating through his mind, but the psi unscrambled the static of the commlink. To him, it felt like she was right in front of him again.

_This is Captain Demeter Starling, requesting recon at current position, transmitting__—__Anyone copy?__—__hostile forces are advancing and—_

"Prelate Zeratul, Duran has located the fugitives. I am sending you the position now, and our forces are mobilizing for engagement." The Admiral had the same throaty jowl to his tone that he remembered. It was strange to hear it cooperating.

"Confirmed. We shall direct our forces with yours. My brethren and I will scout once we arrive."

"Affirmed. Our Adjutant will be in touch."

The Arbiters moved forward with the advance and the old Protoss paved the way for the drop of invisibility with shadows of his own. The screen on his wrist was displaying a blinking yellow dot in the middle of a wide line of metal fencing. The turrets dappling the high ground were long-dead and stood like broken statues around the flat expanse of the facility, which showed signs of recent abuse. Black smoke marks and torn cables littered the ground in a light dusting of debris that broke clear with the lines of marines trudging to the hills.

He signaled to his viziers, and the twelve of them faded into the harsh bright light off the metal tiling, slipping down the wall with phantasmal grace. He tracked the dot on his wrist even more closely.

"Prelate! Our Lieutenant has engaged! Halt your advance, at once!"

He slowed, looking up as his position blinked close to the yellow dot. Through the ramparts of the valley he saw the two of them, standing opposite the other, armed and—

Demeter was nowhere to be seen.

The Vice-Admiral was dressed in combat whites, a plain soldier apart from the splash of gold and black on his shoulder in the twisting leaves of his rank marker. His canister rifle was still on his back, his right hand curled through the air, empty. Zeratul jolted to a stop.

"Vice-Admiral Stukov," the Ghost facing him seemed to trumpet with glee. "I am here under orders…to terminate your command."

"Lieutenant Duran," Stukov snarled. He almost laughed in anger. "I'm not surprised. We both know exactly what is it you're here to terminate." He drew himself up and reached around for his canister rifle. "Get on with it."

"Say goodnight, Stukov," the Lieutenant said, voice dripping with clichéd triumph as he extended the barrel of his gun towards the Vice-Admiral.

"The hell with you—"

Everything froze.

Duran vanished.

Stukov fell.

Zeratul heard the thought even from where he stood, a powerful surge of emotive energy—_NO._

As the Vice-Admiral crashed to the earth, his hand stuck straight in the air, a grim line out of the curl of his body, and, through the wind and fog sweeping around him, someone materialized on the other end of his arm—she tore off the cloaking device as she screamed it aloud now, the psionic energy crackling around her as she reappeared from nothing—"_NO!"_

Demeter was pulling the bullet out of his back. She didn't have her Neurostim, curative serum, cabersol, or even her body armor. She was tearing away his vest and armor to get to his chest. The bullet was so deep in his back that she had to roll him over to pluck it out, half stuck through the ribs and metal plating of his uniform. Blood was beginning to flow out of his chest and into the swollen tissues of his heart, and he slopped back into her lap with a splash that coated her legs in red.

She pulled out the individual canister shots from his pack and plugged the major arteries with them, using her finger to pry them open. Then she heated the tip of his rifle by firing a few shots into the metal side of the door then used that to burn shut everything else. He coughed softly. She clamped a hand over his mouth. "Don't, don't cough."

"My dear, it is too late, and we know it."

"Why did you give me the cloaker, oh _damn_, Alexei—"

His eyes were sad, truly sad, for the first time in her life. He took her hand. "It is over. The Zerg have beaten the UED command. You were right, Demie…"

She clamped a hand over his mouth and went back to work, ripping up their uniforms to make compression bandages.

Du Galle's voice rang in over her line. "Lieutenant Duran! Report your situation immediately!"

Her hand snapped to her headset, tracing red where her fingers pressed against her cheek. Her panic was thick in her voice as is crackled over the commlink. "Admiral, requesting recon at the current position, Vice-Admiral Stukov is down, critical condition—"

"Stand down, Starling, you will surrender yourself to—"

"Admiral, he's _dying_, you can't just—"

"He is a traitor, Starling—"

"Gerard, old friend…" Stukov wheezed. "You do indeed have a traitor in your midst. But it's not me! Duran… he has been playing us both from the start! He convinced you to destroy the Psi Disrupter... even though it was our best chance at defeating the Zerg."

Demeter soothed him by wiping away the sweat from his face and fixing his commlink mike. "And then, on Aiur, ...he allowed the Zerg to overrun us even as we had the fugitives in our grasp. I came here... to activate the one hope we have of defeating them... and you killed me for it!"

He laughed cruelly. "Duran is your enemy, Gerard. I suspect... that he may even be infested as well... use the Disrupter, Gerard... finish our operation... let my death have at least some meaning!" Turning to Demeter, he said to the Admiral, "If you do this, I will forgive you for your crimes against my dear Captain…as a death wish…"

He touched her cheek and smiled weakly, shutting off his commlink. "All the love in the world could not save you from me, my darling."

She was still tying off bandages hastily. "Don't try to talk."

"…when I die…."

"You won't."

"…want you to know…"

"Stop talking."

"…that it was you, Demie, you who pushed me to greatness. Without you, I am…nothing…"

"I'm still here, Alexei. You don't have to be nothing."

"Say my name again."

"Alexei."

"Demeter, my heart…"

"Alexei…!"

Zeratul stood in silent witness with the rest of his platoon, still melted into the world around them and rooted by the scene of Demeter holding him as he passed, crying and rocking the body, barely listening as du Galle screamed, "Alexei! No! What have I done? _What have I done_?"


	10. 10 True Colors

**10 – True Colors**

"You are sure of it?"

"There is no other. Just the two of you."

"And the other—you are sure it's her?"

"The vat produced two—you, while married to your father, the second as a cloned fetal host, braindead in the Dominion labs. She was sent to Earth for testing once you passed your psi entrance diagnostic for the Ghost program."

"Why ship a body so far?"

"You were not the only one. Mothers with firstborns who tested high were extracted for study. An unethical but secret operation, no doubt Mengsk approved of, even by inaction. But none from the same parent as you."

"And this bond donor, the Starling man—"

"A powerful ex-marine who rose to ranks in politics. He buys his last name on an entire generation cloned en masse in hopes of getting a few super soldiers to send to war. The rest go through officer training or are reassigned to other departments—keep in mind, Mister Starling had to pass physical competency tests on the health inspector's watch as the spawning bond is a mutual selection process. What we have is the best genes available for the best price—and one sister among them."

She paused, considering this. It didn't strike her as heinous that they collected her mother's broken body, shipped it lightyears away, and cloned a soldier for money from her corpse—it was standard for what Mengsk would do to win—just that she had never known. Her little sister had come to clean up her mess.

"Demeter."

"Yes, a fine thing," he crooned. "Even sick you could hear her sing."

"And she came of this cloning process as a Ghost?"

He shook his head, fantasy snapping. "No, my Queen, a medic, with administrative review from the _late_ Admiral Stukov." His eyes were deep and red, hungry, but he calmed. "She volunteered for assignment into the jump platoon after gaining a promotion to first lieutenant, and joined the forces in Koprulu after a fairly long hypersleep, shortly before Char was liberated and you were freed."

"How did we not find her? As soon as I sought revenge I looked through everything Mengsk had to hide—"

"I discovered this on my research, independently. A fallen Adjutant contained in the Braxis labs still had an open connection to UED datalinks, which held birth records and military papers I used to track her to your cloning vat—your mother. It is possible she may even have been present with the human forces on Char."

Kerrigan shut her eyes. To think that her own sister had been hovering just miles away from her, even resisting her… Mengsk would pay for this. A grievance against her blood was heavy. "I want her returned to me. Mengsk has ruined her life as much as mine by handing her over to the UED. They marooned her with the Protoss and now they just sniped their Vice-Admiral?"

"_I _sniped their Vice-Admiral," Duran declared, but her fiery glare silenced him.

"She is a part of this, and Zeratul knows it. Is there any way he could find this out?"

"She is aware of her father but she believes her clone to be a voluntary fetal mother, then a gene vat until physical maturity," he stammered. "Unless Stukov knew and told her, perhaps that is what the Adjutant was for… perhaps, that is why he chased her from Earth to here, to die in her arms…"

"I don't give a damn about his emotional problems, dead or alive," she mused. "Bring her in. If Zeratul discovers this, he will use her against me, and I need no equals right now."

Duran bowed to obey, but he couldn't help thinking that Kerrigan would lose interest in this new pursuit, a bored cat with a much-too-small bug, and soon, he would have a firefly all to himself.

* * *

"_Captain, please recite your serial number clearly an—"_

"STR dash quad-oh, dash triple-oh, dash oh-two."

"_Thank you, Captain. Your med ticket is printing, and is to be displayed in a viewable position at all times. Please update your active profile, biometrics first."_

The soft light played strings of purple lines across her vision and her hand warmed on the scanner.

"_Biometrics captured. Height, five foot 8 inches—95th percentile for Starling class, 80__th__ percentile overall. Weight, one hundred twenty-nine pounds with seven-point-nine percent body fat—99__th__ percentile for Starling class, 90__th__ percentile overall. Psi-index from previous records 2.6, 99__th__ percentile for Starling class, 60__th__ percentile overall; new index untested. Eye color, brown. Hair color, blonde. Makeup set, Kember Classics in Natural Eggshell with Charcoal Frame. Body marks, blemish under the left eye_."

She frowned. The readout reminded her of what she was—an old soldier with new polish. The adjutant's impassionate eyes made it seem less harsh. "_Would you like to update any of this information_?"

"Makeup. Show me the standards."

"_The Vice-Admiral has a board of choices saved from your previous employment. Shall I access those_?"

She shook her head. "No. I want something natural, just liner and a nude shadow." _I want to look as human as possible._

Somehow just being _home_ didn't feel enough. She wanted to have something to take back, a last splash of human beauty before she knew he would come for her.

_Zeratul… Duran… even Alexei…_

"_Options on screen, you may scroll to the right_."

She picked the first one she was drawn to, a simple brown cateye with a soft smoky tattoo in the nude matte she wanted, simple and striking, pricking neatly into her skin as she closed her eyes, pores dancing open and closed, swollen with ink. The cold cream soothed the burn a little. "_Would you like to update your eye or hair color or hair style?_"

"Flatten the edges on the back, just a trim. Then do I get orders?"

"_You will be released into the care of the Vice-Admiral once his escort arrives. He has made his way to the rendezvous point where you will join him in arms_."

"I have to fight?"

"_No hostiles are currently detected at this time, Captain. Would you like to close your profile_?"

"Yes."

"Before I close your profile, would you like to schedule a psi-index test, Captain?"

"No."

"Affirmed. Profile closed. Your escort will arrive at the med bay shortly. Please pick up your ticket and meet them at the operations hub."

She lurched along, prodding her eyes, which had finally settled. Her summons took her to the printing desk where a nurse taped her ticket over her arm plate, and she slowly pulled herself into the padded thermal to prep for a chest plate. Her ribs ached at the thought of having to run, or even climb stairs, and her legs sympathized. She hobbled along on her crutch for speed once she scooped it up from the operations bay. There, the wraith Captain from the commlink and two massive guards were waiting, and swept her a quick salute. "No worries, Captain. We got a comfy Goliath for you to rendezvous in."

She winced at that. "Just got shot off one recently. Don't do so well with them. How far is the touchpoint?"

"You can take a bike if you want. I'll call one of the boys."

"Thanks."

She stood there and tried not to sway as she thought of what she was doing, really thought about it, and wondered who she would find when she drive out to meet the Vice-Admiral. Alexei had gone mad parading such a force through here without du Galle's consent or backup. And she had come and put herself in the middle of it.

_Perhaps it is not so bad to want to be found._

She shook her head, that fleshy, throat-heavy voice coursing through her mind, and she remembered how it felt to look up at her greatest fear, face like a tribal mask covered in splashes of creep and blood, but it was broken by a dark wind in the void, grey and silver as a shadow in the moon—

_I do want to be found. Just not by you._

* * *

It was as she feared.

He had gone mad.

She thought back to the last time she had seen him when he didn't appear frazzled or crazy—he was always a little off-edge around her, like a child knowing his babysitter couldn't scold him—but had been something entirely different.

She had colicked again when she arrived, and was pulled off tubes to prep for rehab, a brief three-day tour of the med facility, before he had rushed to her, concerned. She had suffered a beating to remember and, thanks to good timing, she dodged any fallout from her emergency overdose. But even as she staggered on her healing legs, muscles blooming hot against her skin, it was he who had lost his grip on the world, a once excited boy turned babbling fool.

She tried to find room to tell him about the man in the ICU but he was going on and on about someone else, an insurgent who betrayed him to du Galle, a Zerg Infested lieutenant in the service of the UED, here to sabotage everything—

No. She couldn't think like him. He chattered about it like it would soothe her and she grinned like an idiot to play along, calling to the darkness like before, wanting to hear another voice. Not his.

"Demie… Demie, my heart…"

She shook her head roughly. None of it made any sense. Her hands came free of the fistfuls of jacket she was crushing in her hands, and her legs cooled as the warm body slid from her lap, arms hooking under her own to pull her away. She didn't struggle.

_Zeratul…_

She felt whoever it was test her feet but her knees buckled, and she bounced idly before they caught her again. She felt something dry and crackling over the skin near her eye but she hand no hands to grab it.

_Starling, you must try—_

Her knees locked this time and she felt her arms return to her sides. She was surrounded by several Protoss with dark robes, each smoldering as they waited, watching—but he split them as he came to meet her, tall and foreboding even in the full view of the facility lighting.

He stopped before her. She couldn't discern any emotion in his eyes and his thoughts were still. It was nice, despite her impulse to read him. He didn't move when he spoke. "Are you alright?"

"No," she said reflexively, taking breaths to think about it. She knew honesty was the way to go with him. "They killed him. Zeratul… they…"

"I know," he said. The quiet tone stopped her search for words. He reached for her cheek, breaking the blood tracks off with a gentle sweep of his claw. "You have witnessed much today and I fear there is more to come. We have leave to bring you to safety."

"From who?"

"Admiral du Galle."

She stood there, useless, and gave up on articulation. "Huh. Admiral."

"Come,little one."

She felt it twist through her head before she realized she was shaking. Her mind had declared its limit and was overriding her control. "No. You don't understand."

He hadn't moved, as if he expected her resist. "Why not?"

"If you're trying to dodge my court marshal, don't."

"Why not?"

"I got full pardon," she stammered. "Shouldn't be any trouble going home."

"What home, Demeter?"

She looked at him, hand catching the claw coming to push her towards his main fleet with an unexpected flinch at the sharpness, and his eyes narrowed heavily. "They have taken everything from you. Your homeworld, your Vice-Admiral, Epsilon… there is nothing for you here."

She resisted as he tested her with a weak twist but she shook her head furiously, taking a step back. "I can't give up. You wouldn't give up. Why do you expect me—"

"I expect _nothing_ from you, Starling," he replied. "I am here to deliver you from those who would do you ill, as you were operating as an agent in my care—"

"You're wrong," she spat. "You're wrong, and you can't force me to do anything—"

He was still but his brothers had swarmed her, pinning her hands to her back, lashing from thumb to wrist to pinkie, a binding so tight she couldn't help but follow the hand on her back, pulling the bundle up her spine. It didn't hurt so much as force her to obey from strength alone, and Zeratul took up the spare bindings from his officer with a nod. "Your resist disappoints me. Come."

She stumbled after him, struggling against her cough, and managed to keep it down as the warp prism spun overhead. His vigilance was almost omnipresent, but he knew he could not be soft with her. If du Galle was right, he would have to tread wisely to dodge the poison.

Her face seemed even thinner as she warped out, light and psi turning her white in the dim light of the Carrier. He would have to wait another couple minutes for a warp out so she would stop vibrating.

_Humans, so delicate. Glass cannons on a steel ship._

She was silent, eyes red and puffy and raw, slick with the fresh quiet tears she kept trying to blink away, and he hoped Jim had taught him enough to maneuver this properly. His escort took up their sentry positions at the doors to his chambers, and he lightly guided her within, stopping in the foyer to reach for a command screen. He would send word of what happened to the Praetor, then make the jump to Talematros within the quarter hour. Demeter stood, docile for the moment, as he entered his orders, mind watchful of her, watching him.

He finished, sliding the screen back up into the wall. She kept her head low and eyes on him, timid for the first timid. Or perhaps just tired.

"Tell me what happened before I arrived."

"How much did you see?"

He played it back through his mind careful to keep it from her. "A single shot, and you abandoned your cloaker. Then we secured the area and collected you."

She gave him the same look a shadowolf would give a larger kill, wondering if it was worth the risk. She sighed. "Someone shot him, didn't have anything to save him."

"Who shot him?"

She closed her eyes. _Not worth it._ "Duran."

Zeratul cocked his head, bemused. "The Admiral's informant?"

"The Admiral's lieutenant. Du Galle ordered it." Her eyes didn't open, and he could feel her concentration humming in his throat. "He cloaked me when he realized what was going on. That the Admiral betrayed him."

The slits in her eyes gave way to the bloodshot tears beneath, the cough coming in a gentle rumble. She dragged her face against her sleeve. "Maybe you're right."

He knew he was, but hearing her say it in that exhausted, weak voice was painful. He faced her at full height. "We will warp to Talematros shortly, and we can discuss your plans for the future. For now—rest. That's an order."

"You should know," she started before he went for her bingings.

She stopped, but the possibility of freedom didn't persuade her. "I radioed the Vice-Admiral on the open channel. For recon. It wasn't—I wasn't operating under your orders."

"You disobeyed me."

She swallowed at that. "Yes. I didn't know…"

He held the lacings tight in his fists. "You defected to the enemy midfield."

"Zeratul," I didn't know what I would find there, Alexei wasn't—"

"Are you speaking the truth, now?"

Her shoulders sank. "Yes. That's why I told you. It couldn't go unsaid."

That was a stroke of loyalty. Perhaps the tides were shifting within. "Your backhanded honesty is… noted, I suppose. Do not let it repeat itself. I will release you to sleep with your sickness until warp. You will be complicit in all capacities, understood?"

"Yes." She needed an order badly, and turned to obey, waiting patiently as he unlaced her hand cuffs, and she offered him her fist when they stood to face each other. "Here."

He cupped his hand beneath hers as she rolled something gently into his palm, metal clinking against the scales. It was a simple hammered ring, probably gold, with a thin band of diamonds encircling the center. She started towards her chambers.

"What is this, Demeter?"

_He said it, He said my name._

She stopped to hear the echo and savor before answering. "His wedding ring." She pursed her lips but there was no need to fight the tears—none came. "I don't want it. Should have left it with him. Send it to space, I don't care."

"Did he-?"

"No." Her nose, buttoned against her face, outlined her sadness as she looked back at him, gold eyes brighter and stronger than the metal in his hand. "If he did, it wouldn't have mattered. I always told him I would say no. He knew better than to ruin his death with…"

It trailed off, but he felt her sadness set back in over her fatigue. "Go, Demeter."

She went, bars lighting up to lock her away, and he felt the reflective through of flinging bloody clothes into the sink, sitting in the shower for the smallest time possible on the coldest setting to scrub the clotted blood off, then sheets, diving into sheets, and her dreams were like soft winds in a wheatfield, slow and undulating as exhaustion plunged her further into sleep than she'd ever been before. He pulled himself from it carefully.

The warp to Talematros was soft and gentle, the warp pad bringing them to surface equilibrium as the fleet touched down on the mesa's landing strip. The city pulsed in the distance, and the subtle waves of psi that spilled in as the invisibility fields parted made him remember the dark, cold of home, and how these gentle lights in the distance were the best he could do.

He flew in low attitude to his estate with a small portion of his fleet who came to staff and hunt in the wildlands beyond. The current crew was awaiting a ferry off for their month away. Demeter slept for the flight, but came bound in escort to the font, where he personally showed her to the prisoner's suite—a spacious room, but with no windows or screens, just furnishings and an adjoining washroom. She slumped down on the bed as he closed the door.

_She will sleep. She will earn her precious stars with talk._


	11. 11 Incubation

**11 – Incubation**

_Demeter_.

His voice was low and familiar in her head and she warmed to it, a firefly in the darkness. _Yes._

_Wake. _

She considered it, but the weight of consciousness still seemed looming. _I'm tired, Zeratul._

_ You need to eat and move. Wake, for your own good._

No pain registered anywhere but she was putting off handling something, and she wasn't ready to face it. _Please, just a few more hours…_

There was a delay. She braced for a forceful pull from sleep, but it never came.

_Sleep earns you little without the energy to recover, Demeter._ It was just as calm as ever, deep and masculine.

She felt gun shy, like when pulling the first round of sniper, gradually insulated by command, yet the feeling remained, of knowing what you were asking of an officer by being there once yourself. She shuddered. _I'm so tired…_

_It is but a feeling, and it will pass. Wake, and it will fade._

It was true, but she hesitated. It was heavy and thick on her, a blanket of iron in the cool shadows of sleep. _Zeratul…_

_ Wake, please._

The hum of his voice melted as her eyes trembled into slits, the misty shapes of her dreams dropping into the furniture and holdings around her, like ink in a clear canteen, and she tried to rub her eyes, but felt one arm thump next to her on the bed, dead asleep. Blood trickled back in, warm and prickling, and she winced. She had really slept hard.

He was beside her beside on a short folding chair, arm extended with a glass of water in his fist. He pushed it towards her and she obeyed, wetting her lips, then letting the thirst take her over as she drained the glass in several long pulls, then returned it to him before slumping to the bed again. She retreated to the warmth of the sheets.

He watched her, still and calm. "_It is your autumnal season here, a nocturnal one. The stars will be visible at every moment until winter sunrise._"

"In the dark? Like, always night?"

He nodded, folding his hands across his knees as he stood. He rose up and up and up—her eyes followed him languidly as he stopped to look back. "_Apart from the cold, your body will adjust to the psionic rhythm we have here. Approximately twenty-eight hours are in each day, but you will only be active for twelve to fourteen while you are recovering._"

She did the math in her head. "I get to sleep for sixteen hours?"

"_Rest, perhaps. I will be monitoring you during your down times."_

She took a deep breath, then drew the sheets around her like a cloak to sit up cross-legged in the bed. Her knees squeaked beneath her, but stretched no less. "Thank you for what you did. I needed it. I didn't know it, but I did."

"_So long as you operate under my command, I shall see to your safety." _He simply nodded, moving to draw the curtains away from what could have been a window, but it was solid black. He smoothed the leg silks in his lap as he returned to her bedside. _"It is the promise of every leader to every soldier."_

That stung. Earth had been like that—no soldier left behind—but even she could see the folly in such things out here. Earth was a domain of human dominance; Koprulu was a graveyard. Children with bleeding hearts should play somewhere else.

She chuckled at the thought. _Where? Where else can you go? Koprulu can't be the worst. More likely we'd find something that would make us miss the Zerg._

She sighed, coughing at the end, and tried to stave off the twitching that was growing in her chest. "Where are we?"

"_Talematros, on the surface of Shakuras_," he replied. "_Millions of Dark Templar call this city home. You will be safe here_."

Feeling _unsafe_ around him was laughable. She tried not to think about it. "Safe from…?"

He was silent. His head was oriented towards her but his eyes seemed distant. They were green with blue sparks, small little solar flares orbiting the scales on his narrow face, and she wondered if his neural strands lit green as well—the hungry zealots in battle burned blue and yellow and purple like ancient Christmas trees, but he was too calm to let her see such a thing.

She tried again. "From Kerrigan?"

His focus returned, solid green now. "_Tell me why you left."_

The question didn't shock her but the way he said it did. She simplified it as best she could to avoid his tone of voice. "I saw it as a chance to go home. I commanded true until I was separated during the retreat."

"_You abandoned your men while they were executing your orders," _he lectured, stern. "_You deliberately aided in your own capture. What did you expect me to do?"_

She had nothing to say. It hadn't gone through her mind at all, just the brute panic urge to run because she knew he was stronger than her and Alexei combined, and all she could hope for was eluding him. Having to answer that question was testament enough. "I don't know."

"_A decorated Captain in manual command of two surface companies, authorized to administer necessary lethal force, did not anticipate her enemy's moves?"_

She caught on that and stood her ground. "You are _not_ an enemy. I only thought of it as a one-way trip... really…"

"_Why disregard common and battle sense in such a dark hour?_"

She shook her head, pulling her knees up now, and hugging them and she ground her cheekbones against her legs to staunch the stinging feeling in her eyes. She couldn't hear her own breathing for a bit, and then she felt the thump in her throat dissolve enough to talk. "I have no idea, Zeratul. I'm sorry. All I considered was reaching Alexei…"

The old Protoss could empathize with the impulsivity from his youth, however long ago it was, but he knew there was something distracting her from the truth. She wasn't trying to lie, but her recall was better than this, and she always had an excuse—she liked rules and orders, and understood how obedience and responsibility interacted as a leader. Yet, he prayed for patience. Her inner toughness had been put through its paces.

Her eyes were swelling again and he considered refilling the glass, but she was settling against the headboard now, pillows and sheets curling around her as she twitched for warmth. She wouldn't be at full health for another few weeks and she would use that to avoid him, he knew.

His eyes burned like fire, like acid rain, like a blister after a full sprint—"_Tell me everything."_

She drew her lip in her mouth and released. "I got shot off a Goliath as a valkyrie flyover pinned us down. Broke two legs and some ribs and overdosed on the meds in field surgery. Alexei cleaned everything up, no permanent damage or fever, just a cough." She rubbed her shins slowly. "I knew they were coming, but I couldn't get an order through. Did you hear me on comsat?"

He nodded. "Raynor was acting on your information. I personally saw to it—"

"I know, I saw you afield," she gulped. "You said… you called me…"

His eyes narrowed and his arms disappeared in the shadows of his cloak as he crouched against them, emerald sapphires in the dark. "_Yet you said nothing."_

Her toes were peeking out from the sheets and he pulled the comforter back across them. She smiled for a split second, but it felt strange on her face, like a sneeze building in the wrong place. "I dreamed of you as hard as I could, dreamed for days it seemed like." She dabbed her eyes with a fistful of the sheets. "Did you hear?"

He drew himself up straight in the chair and nodded. "_Yes."_

She swiped her nose clean, folding the sheet over. "I told you I was wrong."

His eyes softened but the abyss was still heavy around him, her eyes aching to discern something in the black. "_I heard you, Demeter. What did you witness in my absence?_"

She froze. Her thoughts frosted with it, a mental and physical pause coming over her as she drew the pieces together in reasonable mind, and she halted. He sensed the fragility, and relaxed.

_If you will not tell me, little one, I must once again hold you in contempt. _

She slumped back to the sheets, eyes suspiciously bright, cheeks pulsing pink, and she murmured, "Please, Zeratul… I can't do this…"

_Then you have fallen prisoner once more._

"No… please-!"

But he was upon her in a flash, turning her to her back and she felt the familiar ache of the scaled rope on her skin, threading through her fingers to draw her fists closed. She struggled hard against him but he prevailed, pulling her arms into the knot, and when her thrashing hurt, she stilled, eyes filling against her will.

_You have chosen this. You promised your complicity._

He could sense the pulse of thought that told him she was considering what that meant—she knew he could take it from her mind, but he wouldn't, and seethed when she didn't yield. It was a level of respect she had thought was gone from their relationship, after what she had done to him before.

She tried not to dissolve into the muck her brain was stewing in, and he hoisted her back on her legs to rest against the headboard. He wrapped the loose ends around the strong beam limply. The hand bindings were tight enough to contain her when the leash broke.

She blinked away the mist in her eyes, trying to steady her voice. "Please don't do this, Zeratul, not again—"

_Tell me your tale in honest, in full. That is the price of your freedom._

"Why do you want to know?"

He returned again to the black.

_ It will relieve you. _

She shook her head. "There's no way you can hope to comfort me, after this—"

_Why is that?_

"Zeratul, you _saw_ what he did, what Duran did… he _killed_ Alexei, killed him for figuring out his plans. Du Galle is off screwing around in space and you're holding a _human_ prisoner for trying to go home!"

_I am not taking this lightly, Demeter. Do not think your situation is not… important, to me._

He settled in the darkness like water, watching her eyes shine in the light, cheeks pinking from her fight on the bed. Her fear was waning, giving way to something raw, still bleeding. He calmed from his former anger.

_I have raced across the stars to secure your safety when you called to me._

"Why?"

Her face was still drying as she wrestled control back from her emotions, and drew herself up on the pillows, eyes low. "You found me by accident, saved me from du Galle's termination. But why did you keep me?"

_For the same reason you are not free—you obeyed my command._

She broke their stare with a quick flick of her head, and the fires returned. He could feel the pulse in his legs begging to punish her for denying him after he had proved his worth as a protector, a guardian, at times, a companion…

_Was I not correct in my assumption that your brethren intended to kill you? They have abandoned you to finish their Vice-Admiral's work, yet again, and he cannot fetch you now. Would you go, little one?_

He traced the deepening line in her forehead as she closed her eyes, mind crackling like a firework in the sunset. "I already told you. No."

_Why?_

"He wasn't… he wasn't looking out for me, just… he used me, and I should have listened to you."

He glided to the foot of her mattress, candles darkening in his presence as his blanket of psi spilled over them. She inhaled it like a drugged smoke. "He said… something about my cloning vat... it made me special and my sponsor was only a superior donor… he was mad, babbling on about it, that was why he had to take me before Duran, he said." She twitched, but her fingers creaked against the coils. "He had to protect me. But I knew he couldn't."

The words were forming in her head but she held them like puzzle pieces at the edge of her cloud, drawing her lip in once again, teeth trembling. _Only you could protect me._

He read it in silence. She was still holding back from him. He kept the dying rage from his voice. _He told you this?_

"Yes," she nodded, connecting to his hovering eyes in the darkness. "I made a mistake. Please don't punish me for it. I've suffered… suffered enough…"

She felt the familiar pressure on her feet as the sheets tightened in his wake, hands closing her eyes as a wave of psi crashed her into deep sleep. His voice guided her head to the pillow, sideways as her arms lay beneath her. _Sleep, little one. When you wake, you will trade your bindings for food. _

She hummed in obedience, dumbed by sleep. It felt good to obey again.

* * *

She did has she was told when she awoke to the aide's proddings, slicing the satin ropes from her back and hands with ease. She stilled to smell the food, her stomach turning, but she ate. The protein was tough and thick but she put it all down, knowing it would please him on his return.

The cleaning aides showed her to the pool, filling it with clean, iridescent water, twinkling with the waves. She bathed quickly, not wanting to be seen, and pulled a serum through her hair, feeling it spread between her fingers. She shuddered in the cold, her body weak from her long sleep and recovery from the battlefield, now a once-wounded soldier.

She fished the spare meat from her teeth as the pool drained, and she made use of the thin strips of muslin-like fabric laid on the floor to dry her aching legs. Beside the pile were white civils, she guessed, with a slashed collar and silver buttons, small enough to fit her. It was soft, stretchy. She wrapped her drying hair in the mess of wet towels, and shimmied into the set of pants and shirt, the fabric pulling tight on her skin. She felt her knee warm with the mute sensation of pouring hot water over her leg, the fabric melding to cushion it. She tried to resist a smile. _He's unexpectedly thoughtful._

Humans and their crafts were surely no mystery to him. They weren't to her as part of her domestication under her former—she stuttered mentally as it came back to her. She sighed. _It won't last. Bindings again._

And she was right. The aides returned with purple rope this time, slightly softer but still strong. Her thumbs and pinkies pulled into fists again. The prisoner's knot was meant to induce submission. _Humans and their crafts._

She was promptly escorted to the lobby of the barracks, a short hike from her prison, where she was inventoried with a retinal scan and temperature metric. The Prelate was supervising parade ground as the troops marched to begin the day's drills, sky still dark as night. She forced herself to look away as he consulted with his officers.

She wanted to be honest with him and she had. But if she told him about Duran… she could be a candidate for Infestation, whom Zeratul was bred to kill. She felt the tense sensation of a budding urge to sprint zip down her spine to her legs, knee armor throbbing. Zeratul seemed to sense it, head snapping to her as she stilled, unmoving in her guard.

Her aides marched her away, back to the windowless room, and she sat on the bed before kicking the sheets back to sleep, doing revolutions in her brain as the days passed in the same fashion, her nerve wearing each day. She knew when it would end.

_He will kill me. Sever me from the Overmind._

She couldn't hear the voice so close to the Protoss psi and Dark Templar energy, and she was thankful, but she could feel herself close to breaking, not in fear but despair. The walls were closing in.

She sat for hours it seemed, finally deciding to lay against the sheets, knees drawn up to rest her chin. No one came, and the complex stilled as the ensigns rested, and she wondered how they assigned watch or reveille, wishing to be a soldier again.

_There is duty in service, honor in battle._

Reconstruction was like a warm pool in summer, familiar yet not really helping._ The Protoss mean it. We just say it._

_You will be complicit in all capacities, understood?_

She put her head between her legs, straining to banish his image from her head, hand outstretched with the gold shining in his palm, claws gleaming. She rubbed her temples despite the creak in her shoulder. It wasn't for lack of trying. She was bleeding information all over the floor, and he would get what he wanted sooner or later. She just wanted to know why that was.

* * *

"_Admiral, with the Psi Disrupter's signal hampering the Zergs' communications to one another, the Swarms over Char have scattered in disarray, allowing the fleet to penetrate to the planet's surface. However, there is still a considerable number of defenders nestled around the fledgling Overmind."_

He knew it was true. Alexei had put the pieces together. "Alexei was right. The Disruptor is the key to victory here. If I had destroyed the machine as Duran suggested we would have never made it this far…"

He had played right into his hands, listening to a lieutenant over his truest friend and ally… how else had he seen to this misery?

Alexei had recaptured his star medic, the lost prodigy, her unit called her, and she was with him when he was betrayed—he had seen something in her, something the Admiral wanted desperately to see, brow furrowing in the panel light.

"_Be advised, Admiral," _the adjutant chirped, "_our sensors have identified three cerebrates who constitute the core of the Overmind's defenses. Each cerebrate's distinct capabilities are unknown, so proceed with extreme caution._"

He recalled where Alexei first met her, a psi index physical review, nothing momentous, but it snowballed as she tested higher and higher. The rank didn't seem to attract his comrade and she was too docile to spurn him. That wasn't what he wholly remembered but he recalled she took the first jump to Koprulu as a first lieutenant and Alexei had accused him of signing her warrant—he had—but they too, were due for orders far out, so he was able to appease his dear friend for the time being.

_What did she do before we got there?_

She was in with the reinforcements to the Dominion, who knows what they found, but Alexei had figured it out to negotiate the terms of her surrender: she ran special ops. He remembered lecturing him over the file, promising her a Zerg specialization after sealing it so she could rejoin for command. It was important. He hammered his mic.

"Adjutant, make a comsat short to the Protoss we dealt with earlier, the Prelate. We have his frequency on record."

"_… aligning, Admiral. Please record at leisure."_

He cleared his throat. "Prelate, this is Admiral du Galle, requesting to speak with your associate, Starling. Please copy."

The line was quiet for a moment. Then a slight buzz of static hummed over the connection, but it faded. He wrinkled his forehead. "We need more information before we can proceed. The captains will land to begin the ground marshal and bases there." The adjutant closed its eyes to obey, sending orders from unit to unit with slight blinks in sleep. He rubbed his temples. "She will have this information, I know it."

Thunder crackled and the voice made him jump. "_Admiral, Captain Starling is no longer a complicit agent of yours."_

"I know, Prelate, but her information is crucial in avenging her former comrade—"

"_I will posit this to her but she is in no position to be held liable for her refusal."_

He wanted to kick something but for now it was the best he had. He fanned his fingers out on his desk in a ruined attempt to calm himself. It just seemed to build his frustration.

She sounded like the adjutant, but weaker, less procedural, but warm somehow. "_Admiral_?"

"Captain Starling," he gushed, grateful his reasoning might be sound. "You have neutralized the Overmind before, can you remember the methodology?"

She coughed, static on the line. "_Yes, I think… four intra-carapal injections to the largest available cutaneous appendages. They should be pink and purple, no brown, brown is muscle—use long needles, slow injection, Neurostim and cabersol if available, otherwise any tranque will do. Accompany each medic to the injection site and hold for administration, but Admiral… it can get chaotic… tissue on those things isn't consistent…"_

"And the cerebrates?"

"_Immortal. The Overmind can rebirth them but you can damage them into submission if you take the main neural cluster before it can hatch a chrysalis. They all have to die or their independence risks the capture after remission."_

"Immortal, our enemy… we still have found no way to kill them…"

"_Warp blades. It severs their psionic connection to the Hive. We'll never wield them, as humans."_

Her voice was static. "_Good luck, Admiral._"

"Thank you, Captain. You have avenged us here."

* * *

_WAKE._

The order came in urgent, and she woke, starting up but wincing against her chains. She blinked to see him through the haze that seemed to shroud him when he left his cloak. Her vision pulsed in twisting bands of color as her eyes adjusted to reality, dreams melting in mess of scattered thought.

She rubbed her yes with her fists and turned to face him, nodding her head when he sat. He bowed in kind. "_You have received a call on the bridge from Admiral du Galle_."

She froze at that, mouth hanging open, but she shut it to swallow. "You want me to talk to him?"

"_It is your choice. I made it clear you are not to be demanded if you do not wish to be_."

The words turned over in her head, but they formed again—_you will be complicit in all capacities._

She looked at him, eyes in the dark. Was it a test?

She took a breath in and broke eye contact to bite her lip. She nodded slowly. "I'll do it. Where do I go?"

"_Come_."

The escort jolted to life after him, and he wove his way through the decks to the communications rig, a familiar place for end day marshal. The panel was active and glowing when she walked up to it. She looked at him before looking down to read, but the symbols were foreign as usual, eyes used to the shapes. She wet her lips. "Admiral?"

"Captain Starling," the line buzzed, and the panel tracked the audio lines, and she huddled towards it, looking for the mic. His voice came in clearer as he spoke. "You have neutralized the Overmind before, can you remember the methodology?"

_Of course. I'll never forget._

She slid into the chair there, hands twitching as she searched the images on the panel. "Yes, I think… "

Her eyes found his and she continued, confidence coming, "Four intra-carapal injections to the largest available cutaneous appendages. They should be pink and purple, no brown, brown is muscle—use long needles, slow injection, Neurostim and cabersol if available, otherwise any tranque will do."

She swallowed and took a breath. "Accompany each medic to the injection site and hold for administration, but Admiral… it can get chaotic… tissue on those things isn't consistent…

"And the cerebrates?"

She shook her head. "Immortal." _Little gods, it means._ "The Overmind can rebirth them but you can damage them into submission if you take the main neural cluster before it can hatch a chrysalis. They all have to die or their independence risks the capture after remission."

The Admiral swore a hot and vile oath, and she dropped her hands to her lap in submission. The Old Protoss could not believe her knowledge of such things… there was much to answer for.

"How do you kill a cerebrate?" she squeaked. Her eyes were clear, dark and tarnished brass, but clear. "Is it true, only Dark Templar?"

He beheld that in the dark, then nodded. _It is true, little one. Warp blades with our energies can separate them from the Overmind permanently. It is our duty to bear them._

She nodded. "Raynor always said so." She tapped the panel. "Warp blades. It severs their psionic connection to the Hive. We'll never wield them, as humans. Good luck, Admiral._"_

"Thank you, Captain. You have avenged us here."

She looked at him, armed amongst his vanguard, all to subdue her. She stepped down from the comm hub and he turned after her, guiding her with a heavy claw on her knot. He spoke softly in the silence. "_You know much more than you say, Demeter."_

She shivered, her name ringing down her spine like a horseshoe. "Learning is adapting. Adapting is surviving."

"_Reconstruction?"_

She nodded. "Nothing in there about warp blades."

"_And you have not spoken of knowing Raynor."_

"It was a mission I ran way back. He didn't recognize me, I was one up from petty officer." She turned down the way he directed, away from their escort and towards the divide of his quarters. She ducked through the psi rain as he pushed her. "He was commanding."

"_In battle against the Overmind?"_

She stalled, but he prodded her along, until she sat on the bed the size of a pool, feet tangling with the threads of the bedskirt, satin humming. "I used to hear its voice. Quiet now, around you."

He paused before her, kneeling. Something was beading on his forehead, a gleaming shine on his smooth, dark scales, eyes set among them still bright as ever.

_I promised you refuge, little one._

"I know," she sighed. "I don't… I believe you…"

_Tell me what weighs you in this mist._

She shook her head, strength coming from her breath. "It isn't important. Just human emotions."

_Nothing is unimportant concerning you, little one._

She warmed to her pet name, feeling it stir like s thick syrup within her. He kept his eyes trained on her, always a sentry. She looked back at him, tired and aching from the bindings. "Untie me. I'll eat, or talk, or something."

_Tell me, Demeter, you know what I wish to know. Insist again and there shall be punishment for taking my mercy for granted._

She considered that and moved further back from him, sheets folding beneath her. "Please, it's been so long and these things _hurt_, Zeratul…"

_Only you can assuage you pain. You know the price._

"Just let me go and I will tell you—"

_You will do so on my terms, Demeter. I have already warned you._

She cowered as he advanced to the edge, sliding the armored cloak from his chestplate and placing it on the hooks hammered into the wall. His studded underarmors brought out the smooth, muscled scales that pulsed in flex as he stretched, eyes always on her. She took another breath. "I know you promised to protect me…"

_If that is your fear, little one…_

He advanced in anger and she recoiled on the folds she had made, eyes hot pools beneath his as she curled beneath his hulking form, powerful and alien at the same time. Her hands ached in their cuffs and she wrested her legs to crawl, but he was upon her, knee pinning her down to gaze.

_I am your protector. This you know._

She struggled but the satin pulled tight, and she pushed her chest out to move her shoulders down, body heating as he drifted so close to her face that his eyes meshed into a bonfire that she helplessly watched, voice thick and pointed as he spoke.

_You do not want me to get angry, little one._

She calmed herself as he slowly drew back, and she wet her lips. "Zeratul… you… I'm not trying to make you upset—but you have to understand… tying me up and expecting me to cooperate send two different messages—"

_They are the same. You are bound because you would not cooperate. _

She felt the stillness make her stiff but she didn't budge, couldn't move under his gaze. She couldn't tell him. If Duran was right…

Would he know if Duran were wrong?

Alexei believed him, but never saw her as a monster—certainly, that was how she felt when he… when…

She tasted metal, a nasal taste—she had bitten open her lip. She sucked at the wound, shaking her head. "Then meet me halfway. At least, retie me in front, please."

He pulled her up to sit gently, eyes very deep. _You will tell me your tale, little one. You will leave nothing out, and if I must, I shall impress upon you the imperative that you be honest with me. In full._

She sighed, head bobbing. "Yes." _Why couldn't I have just been a soldier… a number in the ramparts…_

Her fists uncurled as he wound the bindings around her arms, pulling them from their tight cradle gingerly, and she was careful to move slowly around the pain. She rolled her shoulders before her lashed her hands to opposite elbows, fingers again entwined in the knot to form limp fists around the chains. He drew it closed, scales cool on her skin. The ropework was impossible to track, but she could see her old microchip tattoo peeking out from her left wrist, the marker to her story. She sighed.

"You know I'm a clone, right?"

He settled back into his cloak, darkness thick and rolling around his legs. _I know humans clone their inferior officers en masse. I was aware that you were selected from a cloning program on Earth._

She rolled her wrist around as best she could, reading the number, but knowing it echoed forever in her head. "STR-0000-000-02. STR for Starling, last name of my sponsor, Rhett Starling, the military's choice candidate for that year's spawning bond, and the number marks birth order. I was second in a big generation, around eight million I think. I hatched in the first batch of a hundred, second after a premature rupture that starved out the sibling in front of me."

She turned her wrist back down, sliding it against her elbow. "Usually the first hundred to hatch are major duds, called the 'witch's brew'… organs born out of body, braindead, too many allergies… Alexei said it had something to do with how the sponsor's DNA was injected into the cloning vats, that the needle didn't come to temperature until after a few injections. I guess when you're cloning in the millions, you can afford a hundred duds, so Rhett visited me personally along with some other survivors from the first batch who saved him money."

Her mouth was dry. "Alexei told me that I wasn't hatched in the vat pools with the rest of my batch. He said… he told me that he took over an authorized experiment in bioweapons to breed a high psi-index soldier. That involved using sponsored DNA with a sample on file that had been shipped back from Koprulu to Earth following the Zerg invasion. He shut it down, but not before I was hatched."

_You were the experiment?_

She felt cold. "That's why he watched me, all this time. Promoted me to lieutenant, let me take Captain. He was waiting."

_Waiting for what?_

"For confirmation," she murmured. "That the experiment worked."

He was silent. She tried to keep her breathing even and calm.

_This is why he wanted you re-tested?_

She nodded. "He thought my time with the Protoss would activate me, but I've treated men with high-psi spikes when the break their psionic inhibitors, and I haven't felt a thing. Nothing… nothing but fear… and…"

She leaned forward, the words making her sick. "He _bred_ me, Zeratul, bred me like an animal… with Rhett's DNA already obtained and injected, if mine had a special female sponsor, that means…" She swallowed, fighting her nausea. "The sample was shipped from Koprulu and… if it was an entire body, then I may have been… been hatched in…"

Her skin was flushing with heat as she parsed what he said in semi-sound mind, her breathing stopping her from continuing. She steadied. "Duran knew more, and Alexei wanted his information but he completed the guesswork—he figured out why Duran knew and then information followed, about the other sponsor."

_The Vice-Admiral predicted Duran was Infested. _His presence was cool on her rapidly-warming skin. _Is he guessing your mother was as well? Your human DNA would not combine with a Zerg subject of any kind, Demeter._

She sat back up, eyes suspiciously bright. "No. But he knew my mother's identity. He was Infested, possibly in the service of someone who told me…" and a wet line broke its way across her cheek, but she murmured, "that she wanted a sister."

She pursed her lips, and her breath froze in her chest and her face was faintly numb. She could hear her pulse in her ear and closed her eyes, listening to it slow. Thick, scaled claws wrapped around her elbows, one scraping gently on her cheek. His voice was like rolling thunder in a night storm.

_Be still, little one. Duran may indeed serve Kerrigan, but she was poisoned long after you drew breath. Even evil such as she has no strategy so deep._

"It wasn't Kerrigan's idea, it was someone else's, from a program sent back from the Dominion," she replied. "Alexei found the information on an old Dominion adjutant before he destroyed it had had me rezoned. When Sarah Kerrigan was young, she broke her mental psi barriers and killed her mother and almost killed her father before she was restrained. She was unbelievably psionic, and her family was destroyed, so the government stepped in… they conscripted her into the Ghost program, and sent her mother's body back to Earth for testing."

She took a very, very deep breath.

"My other sponsor was Kerrigan's mother."


	12. 12 Sleeping Angels

**12 – Sleeping Angels**

Her arguments were sound, yet he beheld her in silence, tracking the emotion vibrating out of her as he, too, attempted to make sense of what she believed. She felt fragile in his claws, a paper flower amongst the knives.

If it were true… she was one roll on the super-soldier dice, one shot in the all-powerful dark. Her own generation was cloned in the millions, and Raynor once estimated they got less than fifty psi-heavy people per bond. A heinous process, but the young species were always eager to spread and conquer.

Her one connection to a psi-heavy individual was maternal—humans believed psi was passed on X chromosomes—and perhaps she had inherited the same, albeit latent abilities of her biological sister. Certainly, her portfolio evidenced a sharp incline in ability as her career progressed that couldn't have been offset by her favoritism with her superior. No doubt her psi-index had risen, but perhaps not to the levels Duran and the late Vice-Admiral were estimating.

But she wasn't distressed over any potential new abilities. She had known her entire life she was a semi-psionic clone and grew up with her siblings like any of the others hatched on the vat floors, from nursery to barracks to battle. But she was different. All of the Starlings were created with the best DNA that science allowed, but she had been singled out, bred to be better, and yet, she was prisoner on a Protoss homeworld with her old allegiance diving head-first into its last stand, stranding her in the middle of space, an orphan despite her impressive genealogy.

And she felt… broken down somehow, as if there were a gentle crack down her self, shown by the dull brassy quality of her eyes, her ultimate betrayer when her energy was spent. They spoke of her pain as they glossed over through her slender, lashed lids. He ached to see her so, in spite of himself.

_Please Demeter, I cannot bear this…_

She calmed for a moment to whisper, "You wanted to know."

Her hands were curling against his scales, hesitant to touch yet loose, too tired to marshal against her emotions. He relaxed his grip to take a knee, feeling her move with him, shoulders slumping down as she settled calmly in his grip. Her skin glowed pink from the tiny edges on his claws and he soothed the pain with a wave of vibrations. He was careful to mind the sharp ones in his hands when he slid them down her arms to comfort her.

_You fought true beneath a man who betrayed you and gave him the merits of your affections—I know humans take this very grievously when such things do not come to justice, after so much effort has been spent. You can let it haunt you, chase it to the far ends of the world, or you can resolve it, bring in the integrity of reality that you were once denied by conquering it with the power in your mind._

She seemed to bristle into focus at his words, eyes attentive yet still sad. He knew she had tracked home to its dead end and had been forced all the way back, but she was a warrior like him; they knew that the battlefield is its own separate circle, and it cannot leak beyond that arena. To bring the horrors home meant risking your calm.

_What do you believe of this, little one? What does this sad ingratitude show you of the future?_

She broke from his gaze, mind clouding, but she stayed still and composed. She shook her head, slowly at first then settling to fix on the wall. "If Duran knows and he goes to Kerrigan…"

_And your previous contact with her means she will change course to reclaim you?_

"She called me her sister, Zeratul," she said, voice stern. "And she's _right_. You know what she is capable of, what horrible, terrible things she's done, and she killed Alexei just like she killed the Judicator." Her lips were dry and she trembled under his glower. "We aren't _safe_, Zeratul, not until she's dead. Ask Raynor, he knows it too. He's fought against her and seen, just like I stood witness to her betraying you… she cut Aldaris down because he was suspicious of me. She _knew_."

Her speech exhausted her, and he saw the wrinkles in her forehead as she had to wince to fight tears, overcoming them with a deep breath. He felt her stretch her wrists through her bindings, but he stilled her hands with a heavy claw, armor aglow.

_And you believe she is coming for you?_

"Yes," she sighed, head dropping to her chest.

He squeezed, careful not to scrape her. _She cannot reach you here. What must I do to convey my promise to protect you, Starling?_

"I'll fight her, if she comes, sister or not, I don't care," she said, her voice not low and threading for the first time in a while. "If she does, you can be damn sure I'm not—"

Her throat and tongue froze as he flexed his mind to stop her before she degraded into tears. _Hush. They are empty threats. Here, you will find solace again as a warrior once you recover, if what you say you will swear. Little one…_

He steered her gaze back to his with his foreclaw, her eyes hot pools, helpless in his gentle grasp. _I am sorry the world has taught you a lesson this way. It was a cruelty you did not deserve. Perhaps in complicity, we may find a way to make it right, somehow._

She felt safe enough to blink, not breaking contact, a soft smile coming back to her for a fleeting moment. He relaxed his mental grip on her mouth, and she stayed quiet, gold spiraling back in her eyes like soft flecks. He dropped his hand to her bindings and took a fistful of the spare ends. _To begin, I shall reward you with your freedom. Thank you for your honesty in memory and mind, Demeter._

He pulled them apart expertly and they melted off her hands so she could look down at her serial tattoo, a blight to him on her smooth skin. He could see she was fighting the urge to cry again, but she won, putting her hands on her knees to hang her head. "_Finally._ Thank you. After all I've been through…"

_You needed it._ _I will not hesitate to repeat it should you challenge my oath to protect you._

"Can I challenge the reasons why you would take such an oath? If not the oath itself?"

She was stubborn, nothing new, but she seemed intentionally slow to take him seriously. He had explained it to her before, and now that she saw Kerrigan as an enemy, they were allies. She would be a powerful asset if her tale proved true, but this insolence was beginning to vex him.

_Demeter, do not test me._

She raised her hands in surrender, and he rose back to his full height.

_You need rest to face what is to come. I suggest you retire for the day and find solace in sleep._

She was already pulling the sheets over her legs when she slurred languidly, "Here?"

_Here. Now._

He cradled her mind gently into the depths of sleep, a deep, deep sleep, feeling her muscles relax with her breath, skin cooling against the fabric of her shirt in the soft glow of the chamber lighting. The Old Protoss chuckled at her tiny form curled in the sheets, hand splayed beside her with a fistful of the topsheet, asleep before she hit the pillow. She was normal-sized for her race, but she still seemed so fragile.

He would not be so forceful on her wake. He had already asked it of her once, and she deserved to obey her body again. He knew she would want to re-establish touch with a sleep cycle to steady herself so perhaps such a gift would not go unnoticed.

He slipped out of his chambers to the foyer, still aware of her pulsing heat signature on his visor. He knew not of her dreams, but he meant to investigate her nightmares, and see if Kerrigan was throwing all in for her long lost sister.

* * *

Artanis could not wrest the dreams of Tassadar from his sleep, even so long after watching his final flight, and feeling what he could only imagine was a darkness the Dark Templar had felt for a long, long time. It made his entire body ache and tire, just in reminiscing.

But he knew his sleep had been broken for a reason—he started towards his panel immediately, drawing a heavy robe around his shoulders. Sure enough, a wave from Zeratul was waiting, beaming from Talematros. He responded, and prayed for patience, but his old friend was quick. The Dark Templar's shadowy face appeared on screen, and the Praetor bowed his head.

"_Prelate Zeratul, you honor me_," he greeted.

Zeratul nodded in reply. "_Praetor Artanis, I have secured our human informant, the medic Captain from Braxis, and she has proven to be of considerable power, given her state, and she is now cooperating with us as a special agent under my personal command. I would request you speak with her once she is given time to recover."_

Interesting. "_Demeter Starling, I recall. Is she sound?_"

"_She will be in a few days, and we can make the jump to Shakuras for a stand before the Temple._"

She had healed him in the luckiest moment of madness. Aldaris had gone on about it, but Zeratul was committed to his nobility, this he knew. Something had happened to prove herself to the Prelate.

"_Zeratul, this Captain…"_ He stopped to formalize his thoughts. "_You went to great lengths to retrieve her._"

"_I did,_" the Old Protoss said with a flick of his head. "_She has an extensive battle record dating back to run-ins with Zerg cerebrates as a commanding officer. Her superiors betrayed her, and there is information you should know." His green eyes flashed on screen._

_ "Admiral du Galle ordered the death of his Vice-Admiral and is marshalling UED forces against a fledgling Overmind cluster on Char in hopes to psionically enslave it with emission technology protected by forces in her old battalion."_

"_The UED is killing their top-tier officers?"_

"_It is worse—the officer who drew on Vice-Admiral Stukov was a Zerg informant who revealed himself to Starling before departing, surely en route to Kerrigan. Starling escaped to my protection, and we depart to report to you, Praetor. Be mindful of the UED's engagement in this sector. It may prime our time to strike, if we use her knowledge to help us hold against them."_

He sat back to consider what this meant. Zeratul's rendezvous with Fenix and Raynor had only helped push them further in to space, where now their armies lay separate from his own fleet now, but the Prelate had brought in this human girl, who had retrieved the crystal as requested and apparently gone on a mission of her own in investigating the UED, all working in their favor. Zeratul had made her a compatriot. Perhaps this was wise. He moved forward to speak.

"_Then yes, I would like very much to speak with her. What is your schedule? Will she be well to jump with the crystal?"_

_ "The Khalis should have no effect on her, as soon as she has her mind together. We will make the jump with the payload in a fortnight. Marshal what forces we have in the sector and wave Selendis. She may be useful in holding ground afield."_

He nodded. "_We await your arrival, Prelate Zeratul. May Adun watch over you._"

"_May he watch over us all, young Templar."_

* * *

Du Galle refused his victory whiskey when the Captain delivered the news via comsat broadcast. The infant Overmind was in control, the drugs in place, and the location had been secured in the air and ground. He still knew it couldn't be so straightforward.

Their losses had been grievous but the cerebrates were dead and now the Overmind was coming to heel, all according to plan. He had lost his best friend and probably best specialist for a mission like this in the process, but he knew there was more to the truth that he had yet to find out.

The Captain echoed again over the line, voice calm, almost ringing. "_Admiral, the Overmind is ours. Orders?"_

"Hold." He said, trying not to bark, but it still sounded sharp. "Hold, Captain, I will lead the fleet in flyover."

His operating captain obeyed, hailing the rest of the ships as they took the straight shot towards the Overmind in the fog beyond, the advance below dotting the plain with black and red. His grip on his chair relaxed. He had avenged his friend. At long last, justice was brought by his command.

The adjutant chirped in his ear. "Admiral, patching you now to an incoming transmission, opening channel—"

"Uhh, excuse me, Admiral—"

_That voice—this channel—_

It was him.

_That bastard…_

"—_but I'd like to introduce someone to you_."

His voice was thick and poisoned like the evil the Admiral was told he could be, and du Galle almost spat down the line, brow furrowing deeply. "DURAN! You son of a bitch! What is the meaning of this?"

Another voice, this one like a soft echo in laughter, just as spoiled as Duran's. "Admiral du Galle, I've heard a lot about you."

His lieutenants all turned to him with open mouths, a silent chorus of idiots that made his blood boil despite the fear. "What… what _are_ you?"

There was a laughter through the poison. "_I… am Kerrigan. The Zerg you've killed here and the Overmind, which you've come to collect... are mine. As is our mutual friend Lieutenant Duran. You see, Admiral... there are a number of groups in this sector who feel that your involvement here causes certain __**complications**__. My associates and I intend to make sure that your reign is short lived_."

The fear gave way to anger. Alexei had been right, through and through. "You may find that difficult, you abonimation," he spat, "seeing as how I now possess the means to disrupt your control of the Zerg."

"_Ah, you're referring to your vaunted Psi Disruptor… it won't last you forever, Admiral_." Her tone hardened. "_Sooner or later, I'll destroy it. Then I'll show you what the Zerg can __**really**__ do_."

He swallowed, the taste of whiskey in his moth not from any drink. But she wasn't done.

"_Oh, and by the way, Admiral, your friend Stukov was twice the man you are_," she chimed, dissolving into laughter. "_I'm glad you saved me the trouble of having to kill him_."

He put his fist through the commlink screen and screamed to his lieutenants. "Shoot them! I want them both _DEAD_!"

The adjutant interrupted him before he couls scream any more curses. "My apologies, Admiral, but we are no longer registering their signatures on the surface—"

"For God's sake, jump into the sky if you have to! Mobilize everything we have—are you all deaf? I want their heads! I want their heads _now, _or there will be hell to pay! I want them DEAD, _BOTH OF THEM DEAD_!"

* * *

Raynor never stopped dreaming of it, never stopped giving up hope that he would hold her again one day, just as he had in the barracks Commander's suite, in the showers after hours, in the slow moments after sleep when she would still be whispering the asides of her dreams—even if it meant giving up the form he had been attracted to, there was a soul beneath it that he had been separated from for so long, and it was beginning to burn.

He thought of Sarah when he had met that medic girl who Zeratul had declared for, the Captain wench who slutted over to the UED to find some lost love of her past. Zeratul didn't know it, but he seethed deep down, knowing what it had taken to earn the Dark Templar's trust, and to see it betrayed so openly…

But surely Zeratul had his justice. He could only hope for his own some time, wondering if the Prelate dragged the girl back over to his side as the UED tried to wrestle with demons it couldn't control. It would be for her own good, but they never came quietly. Why he was still protecting her…

_Stukov's prized Captain in the arms of a Dark Templar…_

_She's a weapon. Like Sarah._

He raked his fingers through his hair.

_She won't spoil on his watch. Not like Sarah did with Mengsk._

Which brought him to another thorn in his side—he was in full cooperation with the man who let that happen to her, that evil bastard with more hair than honor in his old age. Mengsk was sleeping somewhere else in the barracks, even when Raynor was not. That was the difference between men like them, after all; Mengsk slept like a log every night despite his horrors of the day and Raynor couldn't court sleep for more than a few hours.

He hoisted himself up and dumped his feet into his boots, rubbing one eye hard enough to send his contact lens swimming through his socket. He blinked a couple times to bring it back to focus, and Fenix's slim profile came into view.

His old friend stood in the doorway, head cast backwards to wave off his guard, with his sword and armor gleaming in the dim light from the hall. Raynor stood with a grunt. "You're up late."

"_As are you, friend. You sleep less and less. Kerrigan steals even rest from you_."

He sighed. "Not this time. It's the medic now. Wondering why she's here, why she's playing with Zeratul and why he's playing with her. Seems… odd."

Fenix let a claw slide down the doorframe. "_I cannot guess at his motivations, but the Prelate has little patience for humans. Perhaps she is informing. I suspect as much after her double defection."_

"He should have killed her when he captured her. Now he just risked the lives of his troops to get her back after she betrayed him." He shook his head. "He's not a human, but if he were, I'd say he wants her. Not as an officer."

Iron bells rang in Fenix's throat and the Templar slid his hands to his knees to stabilize his shaking. "_Do we speak of the same Dark Templar, my friend? Zeratul, taking to a human?_"

"Hold on, hold on," he said, waving off Fenix's laughter. "She was boning the UED Vice-Admiral before she was abandoned, so this is kind of her thing, getting naked with her superior officers. I hope he's not falling for it."

"_Jim, are you aware of how we conduct such… affairs of the body?_" Fenix posed, tone light from trying to stymie the giggles. He followed Jim out of the bed racks and into the mess hall, empty at this hour. "_Protoss mate for life, and not with any humans, of this I am certain._"

"In theory, we do too, but we practice on each other. Lots, sometimes."

"_It is not possible for us to do such things. We are attracted to only one other, and the physical manifestation of this attraction occurs only in ritual. It is not biologically possible for us to, as you say, 'give each other a go' at leisure._"

Raynor thumped onto one of the mess rows with a look of mixed disgust and intrigue. "Wait a sec. You're telling me you only get boners in the middle of your weddings?"

Iron bells again. "_The ceremony itself is only part of the ritual. Intercourse can happen as many or as few times as a mated pair decides, but only after they both bind themselves in ritual."_

"Not trying to sound ignorant, buddy, but that makes absolutely no sense."

Fenix couldn't fit into the mess hall tables so he settled on the edge closest to his friend, leathers fanning out against the metal. "_If Zeratul intended to mate himself to this human, they would undergo the ancient ritual of sorunai rite. The ritual begins with the ceremony, where they would exchange blood and thought in symbol of what is to come and present themselves as intendeds to the populace. When the ceremony is over, they are sealed in the ritual chambers until he is brought to finish and she is full with life, and then they are declared a mated pair and may continue breeding as they see fit."_

He continued despite the growing distance between Raynor's jaw and head, trying not the laugh again. "_They could never be mated, as she could not hold a Protoss child. Nevermind that he would not choose her as his mate, but she cannot tempt him outside of ritual, no matter what trick she might employ."_

"So every time you guys do it, someone has to get pregnant? Well, not someone, the lady?"

"_Only the first time. But it is with great effort that we males are spent, and most do not waste the energy, save to conceive."_

"'Great effort'? Do I even want to know?"

Fenix crossed his arms, betraying the laughter ringing in his voice. _"No, you do not. But the Starling girl cannot draw him into any web she spins. In any case, Zeratul would not stand for it. He is keeping her alive because she has use to him on the battlefield, not because he desires her._"

"That's what I want to know. What the hell about her is so special? She should be dead or on her back by now, and you just told me that can't happen." He put both hands through his hair several times. "I'm telling you, Fenix, she's his Kerrigan. She's a weapon and he likes her, at least. She's good at being the favourite, but she's already blown up on him once, she'll do it again."

"_Do not be so certain, my friend_," Fenix counseled. "_She may well be a weapon, but he is pointing her away from himself. The next time she strikes, it will be at his enemy._"

* * *

Her skin was alabaster against a sea of azure, his scales burning like a thousand hot knives on her cooling body, the silk robe that once was draped about her shoulders torn to shreds as his claws flashed through it, pulling her body to his with enough force to break bones had she not been ready. But she too was aching for him, the blush in her cheeks and breasts evidence enough, her strange human form oddly alluring, waking in him a desire he had never tapped, never let cross him before, the urge to take her now consuming him in the blaze of heat pulsing between them. Her eyes were molten, steaming with feeling and psi, focused on him like lasers as she moved beneath him, hands working furiously to undo the lacings and straps on his breastplate to push his armor away.

She wasn't fast enough, and he thrashed his hands beside him to shake off his gauntlets, dislodging his pauldrons and cloak with loud clangs as they slid to the floor, freeing his arms to pull her legs apart and push her further up the wall. When her fingers finally bested the knot of his underarmors and pulled his loincloth away, he couldn't wait a moment longer, the tension and fire building there springing to life when he felt the cool air on his naked body, and took her in a thrust so powerful that he felt her nails curl under the scales on his shoulders, half with pain and half with relief. Her eyes showed it too, puckered under her eyebrows as she winced from the process, yet turning white hot with pleasure as they rolled back in her head, spinning…

He couldn't think. He was free now, unburdened by logic, following only the rhythm of her heart beat he could feel throbbing down her hands, breathing in the smell of their bodies as he moved with her, feeling her slide further and further up the wall with each stroke, her legs wrapped around his hips like hot lashes of fire, now burning against him with the pressure. The sounds she made only encouraged him, stoked the furnace, and he could feel his claws sinking into the soft flesh of her back. She would be bruised tomorrow, and everyone would know she was his.

_Mine… mine… you are mine, little one…_

Her mouth was open in a soft 'oh' from her moans as he took her, over and over, each time harder and stronger than the last. She had gone from squeezing his shoulders so painfully that he wanted to punish her to clawing at the strands of his neural crest, trying to pull herself deeper into him, the pinking skin on her cheeks deepening as she fought the shame of her nakedness with the way he was making her feel. She was a furnace of honey and gold, the mess between them sizzling like the fire that seemed to have taken them both, the moist crackle of wet sex filling him along with her screams for more.

She pushed herself against him, fingers hooking in his neck as she pressed her naked body to his, the scales smoking from the heat. He could feel the sharp points of her breasts on his stomach as she pulled herself up to cradle his face in her hands, the expression on her human features driving him insane. He couldn't take her any harder without hurting her, yet the longer he poured himself into those eyes, those lips, this body… it wouldn't end. The pleasure wouldn't stop.

Her little 'oh's ran together as she melted in his arms, her skin silk against the steel of his scales, minds washing together like the solar tides casting lights on her muscled skin, flexing from the surrender. She put her face to his, hands burning with her forehead, to whisper a word to him through the haze of her bliss—

"_Zeratul…"_

He woke in the coldest sweat he'd ever felt, beads of it breaking with consciousness as he bolted upright in bed, neural crest alight from the dream. He swore to himself when he saw how his body had reacted, his legs and the member between them tight and drawn to attention, focused from the reverie. The mental adventure had tricked his body; luckily, he had not ruined his sheets like some juvenile ensign. The shame and guilt was just as strong.

_A dream. No more._

A voice from the back of his mind echoed, _but can we make it a reality? A dream no more?_ And he shook his head violently as if to dislodge the thought, knowing the harder he tried to banish the memory, the harder it would return to him. He moved to the edge of the bed to find his robe, pulling it off the hook and around his shoulders and streaming behind him when he swept out of his rooms and down the barracks hallway. The movement helped bring his muscles to heel, but he wrapped himself in darkness for an extra measure of tolerance. He would not let himself go again.

She slept in the barracks now that she had sworn her Captain's oath to him at last marshal and he noted how familiar he was with this path for his nightly walk, his feet knowing the steps better than his mind. He always seemed to be brooding when he checked on her at night, now no different. He was silent as the shadow he cast on the wall towering over her cot, her tiny body nestled in the middle, too small to take up any real space. The Protoss-sized cot exaggerated it; she was like a ship in a bottle, so small and fragile and little…

The fire he felt in the dream was beginning to spread again and he crouched at the foot of her bed, watching her chest rise and fall beneath the sheets. She always slept on her side, back towards the wall, with a hand under the pillow and the other near her mouth. The top sheet was clean and unblemished from the tossing and turning she usually suffered in sleep and he wasn't entirely sure how he felt about her getting her first decent rest while he struggled with dreams of her. The irony was not lost on him.

She looked just as she had in his mind—only now the lust was replaced with exhaustion, the small 'oh' her lips were forming from a deep sleep instead of… he quashed the thought quickly and rose again, sweeping back out of the barracks with speed.

_Seeing her will not make the dream abate. Coming here was a poor choice._

He ached as he left, the mental battle raging in his mind, and set off down the track to tire his legs. At least he could hope they would be too drained to repeat their previous offenses should he ever be graced with sleep again.


	13. 13 From Before

**13 – From Before**

The voice hadn't spoken to her since she had been here. No doubt the presence of so many Dark Templar kept the gurgling whispers at bay and while she was grateful, she knew it wouldn't last. The troops were readying for a jump to rejoin Praetor Artanis' forces afield, where they would once again go head to head with the Zerg. Then she wouldn't be able to get the voice out of her head.

That's how she knew her sister was coming for her. Kerrigan's children were whispering to her through the void of space, calling her like a sibling out playing past dinner. She had been as honest as she felt she could with Zeratul, but she had to keep this secret. If he believed her, really believed that the Overmind was calling to her, he'd bury his blade in her chest. She sighed.

_But what is my life worth, even to me?_

It stemmed from the brute human will to stay alive, a primordial urge deep in the genes to save their species for procreation, perhaps an instinct the Protoss had long abandoned in their galactic search for otherworldly truth. They lived for millennia. Humans were blessed to see just a century.

She almost forgot she was walking when she felt something crunch under her foot, her knees wobbling from the sudden drain of confidence in her step. She lifted her boot gingerly, the stones beneath settling back in place. She could feel herself smiling now.

It was the beginnings of the cobbled walk to outer gardens of the Prelate's palace, a place she loved almost as much as _Void Seeker_'s windows into space, the assortment of obsidian rocks paving the way glittering in the moonlight like a million shards of purple glass. Her legs regained their confidence and she tried to winch the grin out of her lips and into something less stupid.

_It feels like I'm in the sky whenever I walk through here. _

The sound of the stones clicking under her boots was never as loud as she expected, certainly softer than the gravel paths from the makeshift barracks on Braxis, and she threaded her way through the twisted wood and flowers that the Elect kept growing here, dragging her fingers through the blooms to watch them flutter in her wake. Everything on Talematros seemed to have its own inner glow, even the trees and bushes that grew all over the city, though the flowers seemed to shine like little glass suns. Just like the views of the stars, they never got old.

She was moving towards her favourite part of the garden and stopped once she reached it, looking so far up that her hands felt around for somewhere to sit. She dropped into the bench facing it, and crossed her hands in her lap.

_Tassadar._

The statue was made out of some wrought metal she'd never seen before, surely too decorative to be of any industrial use, but it made the image of the old Executor look so stately and lifelike, the flecks and carved grooves bringing something to his features that she hadn't remembered when seeing him in real life, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it. The more she came here and strained for the memory, the more it seemed to run from her, receding back into her mind as the whispers of the dread voice crept in. She remembered _his_ voice, the same booming thought-speak of her new Commander only with an almost nasal timbre to it, calling out to the battalions, _En Taro Adun, brave warriors!_

_Now they say En Taro to you, Tassadar. _She paused at the thought that felt more like a prayer and sighed. _I hope it is enough to never forget you._

She pushed herself to her feet again and traced the edge of his metal blade with her hand. He was poised to strike, arms extended and legs flexing beneath him, eyes furrowed in concentrated fury. With severed neural strands and a different paint job, he could have passed for…

She felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise with her heartbeat, the pressure in the gardens suddenly stifling.

She wrinkled her nose for a second as the realization crossed her. _Zeratul is here._

She turned, but there wasn't anything there besides the deep, dark shadows of the garden, now going black from the thickness of his presence. She had told him how much she disliked his sneaking about and as hard as she tried to temper that with what she knew of him, she hoped he would meet her halfway.

A stream of black smoke filled in his shape behind the bench, and he slowly walked over to the statue, green eyes just small slashes of light on his dark face. He wore his face cloth this time and she couldn't help but to stare, wondering why he would bother to cover his featureless jaw, especially out of battle. He was less focused on her, eyes on his beloved comrade.

"_He was one of the few Khalai whom I still called Brother." _He too crossed his hands together. "_His sacrifices mean much to us all."_

She nodded. The silence that followed didn't feel awkward or pregnant, just… right. She couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't ruin it.

She pushed through her thoughts for the memory again, and again it seemed to twitch away, her own mind laughing at itself coyly. She tried not to let it register on her face, feeling her nails sink into her palms, muscles straining along with her head.

Only flashes came—roll call, then the marshal on the front lines, glimpses of Tassadar and Raynor through the heads in front of her, then faces covered in blood and dirt, bones through the skin, the adjutant screaming over the commlink lines, the tension in her arms from holding herself on the thing's vein with her hand wrapped around the syringe—only the bad stuff. She couldn't dredge up the speeches or pep talks or the sound of engines overhead signifying their victory—she must have passed out on the vein. Or maybe her brain just deleted it. Needed more room for visions of dead men.

_I lost the seventeen on that mission. My standing career record._

She was swearing it over and over to herself even when Alexei finished his jump, babbling on about how it would never happen again, that seventeen would forever be her limit, she would quit if it went higher, how she couldn't do it anymore because seventeen was too many—he had to shake her hard enough to make her teeth rattle to get her to shut up about it. Then she just silently added it to the litany of Reconstruction, right after the bit about sacrifice.

_There is duty in service, honor in battle. Sacrifice is the cornerstone of the fight. Sacrifice is service. Sacrifice is honor. Sacrifice is your duty in battle._

_Only seventeen._

She wanted to remember. She could remember the number but their faces and their dying breaths swam up and out of her memory. She sighed.

Zeratul didn't budge, his voice like a soft, rumblng thunder. "_He spoke highly of humans, thanks to his interactions with James Raynor."_ Now she could feel his eyes burning on her skin. "_You were there when he defeated the Overmind."_

Her head felt like it was full of sand when she nodded. "Yeah."

"_Did you meet him?_"

"I stood with him in battle, just like you did, probably many more times," she heard herself saying, her mouth feeling numb. "Once was enough to show me what kind of soldier he was."

His head turned back to the statue. "_You were part of the envoy from Earth? The reinforcements sent after the Confederacy discovered the psi emitters?_"

"Do you know much about that?"

"_Very little. Raynor spoke of it briefly, saying how their arrival was timed around when the chaos coalesced."_

Another solemn nod. She was playing his role now. "Before Mengsk claimed General Duke for the Sons of Korhal, he sent word to Earth of the psi emission technology in hopes reinforcements would help suppress it." Her confidence helped her throat to loosen. "It just got people excited. They sent a scout force to set up a warp receiver in Koprulu but the Zerg threat ended up pushing us into Raynor's arms shortly after setup."

"_The scouting force split? With impunity?" _

She sank back down to the bench. "By the time we arrived, Mengsk has abandoned the Confederacy. The UED had no allies out here and the force they sent was only a third military. We didn't know the Zerg were part of the plan. We'd never seen them before, and they scared us shitless." She forced her hands to release her knees; the shaking was better than her nails digging in her suit. "Most of the militia defected to whatever holdings against them we could find. I ended up with the Raiders on sheer luck but when the Expeditionary Force arrived from home, Alexei…"

Why was his name still hard to say? After everything she knew, everything she'd seen…

"He came for me, said he couldn't leave me with a traitor and murderer. Had me Reconstructed and gave me command of Epsilon." Her nails bit in again. "More of him stirring the pot. He'd do anything to keep me in thrall."

It was a long while before he replied. "_He treated you like a commodity, not a soldier._"

She made a fist on the top of her knee, driving her knuckles down instead. "I should have stayed with Raynor. If I had been Reconstructed before the Long Sleep, I would have. But I was so frazzled with all the politics and violence and secrets that when familiarity returned, I just wanted to go home." She put her head in her hands. "He couldn't promise me that, even I wasn't that stupid. But the Reconstruction helped. As much as it sucked, it helped."

That wasn't totally true—if it were as good as she said, the gurgling voice from afar wouldn't be so loud.

He hadn't budged, his eyes still fixed on the statue of Tassadar. She felt her hand patting the place next to her on the bench, but snapped it back to herself when she realized he was ignoring her. Or at least continuing being too stoic to notice.

He was like a statue himself, his words echoing without a single flicker of motion. "_You speak so often of this 'home'. Is it Earth?_"

She shook her head. Before she could speak, he countered, "_Is it somewhere else? Somewhere the Vice-Admiral once brought you?_"

"Home isn't a place," she mumbled. The stars beyond the garden were bright in the moonless sky. "Earth wouldn't give me that feeling. Nothing ever did, once I left it."

"_Then what is it?_"

The lump was back. She pursed her lips several times, then her shoulders sagged in defeat. "I don't know."

This silence felt oppressive. She knew why.

"You're wondering why I threw everything away to try and find it. Why I tried so hard to go home."

"_I am wondering where you would be had you the power to pursue it_," he retorted, head dropping. The shadowy reflection from the stones seemed to calm him, taking the edge off his voice as he spoke. "_I believe you would be dead. Du Galle is a treacherous man and has many times attempted to remove you from his subordinate by perfidious means. Once the Vice-Admiral perished, he saw the value Stukov so prized and waved me for your service. And now..."_

She didn't want him to finish that, so she did it for him. "And now I'm here. With you." She would be pushing it with this one but the words just bubbled out of her mouth like blood from a scrape. "And you're wishing you had killed me on Braxis instead of dragging me into this to suffer. Which you should have, I can't blame you there. But if that's really what you wanted, you should have left me with du Ga-"

The gardens around her turned black, the statue giving way to black, everything was black, save for the small slashes of his eyes against the darkness he enveloped her in, now narrowed in anger and burning with psi, the coils of green smoke melting into the shadows. His claws were digging into her shoulders and back, clutching her to keep her from bolting as her mind commanded.

_I could not have killed you, little one. Your life is not a game of politics. _

She was shuddering, but the trembles didn't freeze her jaw. "Why did you let me live? On Braxis... because of... of Artanis?"

The emeralds burned, supernovas in a starless sky.

_Because of you. Your position, your allegiance, your abandonment. _

He released her, and she felt her feet bear weight again, her knees buckling slightly before she caught herself. His clawed hands slipped into the darkness of his cloak.

_I was once left to the abyss by lost souls who came for my aid after centuries of being forgotten. The Conclave is still lost, as is your UED. Those left behind have value and valor that their old comrades cannot yet see. _

"You knew," she breathed, "you knew, didn't you? I was psionic, and you spared me?"

_You vibrated like the Khalis itself when Artanis brought your broken body to me on Braxis. It is his mercy that brought you into mine._

The voice laughed somewhere in her mind, but she silenced it, skin boiling against her head, her heartbeat rising in her ears, nails digging into her palms when she balled her hands into fists. "You... you..." she stammered, vision blurring at the edges as her temper burned away her fear. "Value and valor... you are just like him... value, you only saw _value_..."

_It is your own value that put you into this. A less talented woman would still be on Earth._

"Bullshit, a less talented woman would be dead on Braxis after Artanis brought her half-dead to his Prelate," she spat. "You had no intentions of letting me go back, not because they would kill me but because you'd lose an asset."

It was a tug-of-war, just a giant game she was tangling herself in with every move, no exit and no remorse. She was a coin and everyone wanted a chance to flip her for luck.

"Talent, rank, connections to the top... call it what you want, I don't give a shit. You're just like him, alternating between kind words and the truth—that I'm just a tool to get you closer to what you want."

His eyes had widened, but they quickly narrowed again, his body surging towards her as his anger crackled through the air—

She put her tiny fist in his shoulder, knowing he would catch it as she did, claws closing over her fingers like a spider made of icy steel. She pulled her head next to his and tried to keep her voice level, but the thrum of frustration coursing through her seeped into her words.

"I'm not stupid, just weak. Too weak to fight off either one of you, so I have to put up with the shit that comes along with playing secretary to the second-in-command. I swore you an oath I won't break—but if you're going to treat me the same way as my 'old comrades', don't pretend you're better than them."

She shook her hand free and half-walked, half-ran from the gardens, eyes on her feet and thoughts heavy around her as she let them work together to take her away, far away, anywhere but where he was, the tears coming despite how hard she was biting her lip.

He stood there in his own stunned silence, watching all the rocks hovering in the air as her psi trembled around him, wondering who was right about her—Alexei or herself.

* * *

The more she thought about it, the more it sickened her, every part of it – how _she_ was born, how Mengsk had done that to their own mother, how _she_ was somewhere between innocent and guilty and powerful, yet powerless to claim herself in either direction. Kerrigan would make that call.

Her children brought her whispers of her sister's movements, of her failed jump back to the UED, of Zeratul dragging her out from under that burning building, and so long as he held her close, she was untouchable. Kerrigan needed more power, needed more troops, and some of them were drooling for more of their Queen, the idea of another mother setting some of them in bloody frenzies of impatient excitement. That was what scared her – would bringing her sister home only spell doom for her own ambition?

Duran had promised her that the girl would be back if they drew Zeratul away with the Matriarch—but it wasn't working. They had planted the seed within the old Protoss more than a month ago and Zeratul was prepping to jump to Shakuras with Demeter instead, leaving Raszagal in Talematros. She licked her bones clean and tried to stay calm.

"You promised me this would work. Was a fool to believe you?"

"My Queen, I have dismantled the UED to flush her into your arms. If your quarry goes to ground, leave no ground to go to – she is out of options once we pull her from the Dark Templar."

"Yet he is taking _her_ to Shakuras, not the Matriarch," she mused, watching him. He didn't so much as shudder. "I daresay he loves her."

"Perhaps now is our time to strike," he replied, voice like smooth muscle, a heart pumping in the depths. "Take the Matriarch from him while he is at war, my Queen. He is destroying renegade Zerg for us and you shall have his prize, one he cannot give up for love or liberty. The sociopolitical pressure will be too great. He will trade her life for his blessed Matriach's, or the Conclave will exile him again, and they will stand alone, ripe for the taking. You cannot lose if we take Raszagal now."

"Another one of your tactical promises, Duran?"

"No, my Queen, only a reading of the field. She is running out of places to hide. We must only lift the last rock."

"And how do you propose we spirit away the Matriarch from a city full of Dark Templar?"

"Perhaps it would be best if we staged some kind of diversion, my Queen, and claimed the Matriarch during the confusion."

She felt around for more corpses, but there weren't any. "What did you have in mind, Duran?"

"The Protoss outpost of Talematros is built upon a large mesa and is essentially impregnable to ground attacks. However, Talematros is fueled and supported by a number of adjacent pylon clusters. I believe that if we can cause a surge within those pylon clusters, we can cause Talematros' power grids to overload. The resulting explosion will be the perfect cover for retrieving the Matriarch."

She stirred the pile of bones with her foot. "You seem to have given this a lot of thought."

"Talematros is famous for never falling in the millennia of battle is has seen. Only the Swarm will make it bend the knee. Only your power can break the City of Darkness, my Queen."

"It's true," she purred. "But I have to deal with Mengsk first, while he's close. I believe the time has come, Duran. You know what I mean. Jim and Duke are only going to slow me down once they find out I backstabbed their old friend. Time to backstab them first."

She rose from her seat, the zergling beneath clawing to walking beside her, and she kneed it out of the way to get a view of the sky. "Draw the web. I need something to kill."

* * *

Now it was Fenix's turn to wonder.

It hadn't struck him until Jim had brought up suspicions of Zeratul acting out of love for the medic girl – now it seemed so glaringly obvious that he could barely understand how he had missed it before.

Jim was doing the same thing.

He was siding with Kerrigan because he loved her. Not what she was, but what he saw in her, however false a vision it may be, but he loved her, and she was so deep in his heart that Fenix suspected she had no need to Infest him. Love was a poison she knew how to work.

Jim knew what she was. He knew the old Sarah was gone and he would never again live out the blissful dreams he had most nights, some wandering into Fenix's head when he was so deep into sleep that he couldn't police them. It was easy to understand how he has suspected Zeratul, for Jim could never forget how good it felt to be in love and be near it again, but now, he was so close that he could burn.

Zeratul was less careless, less biologically tempted, though it didn't diminish anything Jim was feeling. Fenix often wondered if Protoss missed out on the glorious highs of such emotions just to dodge the lows. It was obvious to him that the highs were magnificent enough to make even wizened men throw their plans to the floor and soar out into the black to feel that way again, and those who had no desire to experience it at all – Mengsk – were the cruelest of the bunch.

It made him think many a time about what was so special about emotional and carnal 'love'. If Zeratul really had found it with this girl… as improbable and as ridiculous as it seemed, Fenix knew it would be worth any pain he felt for it. Protoss could stand to have a moment of excitement in their long, long hour.

He shook his head. _I have been around humans so much, I am beginning to think like them. Zeratul is a warrior, not a fairy tale._

He didn't dwell on it for long, as Jim's voice crackled over the line. "In place, ready to go. Tell Kerrigan she can move in on this Command Center."

Fenix sighed into his mic. "_It is difficult to believe that I am working alongside my greatest enemy in order to save this sector. Fortune has been whimsical of late_."

The sarcasm helped shake Fenix of his brooding mood. "You sound like a tired old man, Fenix."

"_Don't let the fact that I am three hundred and sixty eight years older than you dull your impression of me, young Raynor. I can still... how do you Terrans say it... 'throw down with the best of them'_!"

"I stand corrected," he laughed back, mic blurring from the volume. "Never doubted ya, buddy! Let's kick some ass and get the hell out of here. I need a damn drink."

* * *

It was so small in his hand, as expected. Human fingers were tiny and he wondered if they slimmed with command. The weight of a weapon kept the calluses thick, and the band was so dainty in his palm.

The gold reminded him of her strange eyes, sickly orange for a human, too bright a brown to be called anything else, and the little diamonds in the center sparkled like stars. Its simplicity was deceiving—it was the reason she had come back, at all.

He knew the Matriarch would hail him soon but he couldn't help mulling over the curious little ring, twirling it amongst his claws to watch it catch the light. His Captain had pulled it from her dead Commander's fist to give as a token of her new loyalty, a sign that she had given up what she once called _home_.

_She learned the sad lesson that I did long ago—home is a lie._

It was a cruel lesson, one of the bloodier ones that made him wonder at the inner durability of his turncoat Captain. His too had been taught with life and the old ache still burned. He did not want to imagine the pain fresh from the blow.

Which is what earned her his mercy. Soldiers stand tall in battle and stoop before the stars. He knew what bearing the cross of battle meant, and so did she.

_Zeratul._

He stirred from his thoughts, the familiar voice echoing through them as they scattered like leaves, the breeze of her psi sweeping in as she appeared before him. He stood at the comsat rig, balling the ring in his fist.

_Raszagal. I have been expecting you, dear friend._

Her eyes were calm, buzzing. _And I, you, my child, yet I hear of your engagements here to ready for war._

He bowed as she approached him and they walked down the main lane way to the bridge of the complex. _Artanis has made his plans for Shakuras. We shall leave on the morrow, my Queen._

She flexed her shoulders. _I shall bring the rest of my vanguard on marshal. News reaches me of a new addition amongst yours._ She craned her head to look at him. _A human defect, who bent the knee on Aiur._

_An operative of mine afield,_ he replied. He switched the ring to the hand furthest from her, feeling for a pocket. _Her information has been helpful and her experience with the Overmind on Char not long ago suits her for specialist. I swore her in on the last commission. _

_As Executor?_

_As a specialist, titular Captain only. _

The Matriarch's eyes glowed gold. _You have found strength in trusting in aliens, my friend. I hope that you have picked the right ones._

_The Zerg are forever our enemies. I shall never submit to Kerrigan's treachery again._

_Do not be so quick to judge, Zeratul,_ the Matriarch countered. _While Kerrigan's crimes shall never be forgiven, the human Raynor has been both an asset and a liability in your motions for friendship and duty. This girl shall be the same, as are all creatures stranded far from their rightful place_.

_And you see no place for her amongst warriors?_

She stopped at the bridge doors, still closed, though they lit her scales with their translucent glow. She was looking to the stars. _Do you? _

_She is a fighter, I have seen it—_

_I do not doubt she is a warrior, my child. But do you see a place for her amongst our kind?_

_I will not abandon her as the Conclave abandoned us. Surely you can see the folly of such—_

_You hide from the question, Zeratul._

Her eyes were so brassy, so orange, he felt like she was pulling Demeter's image right out of his head, the picture of her sad, gold eyes burned into his mind along with her words. Raszagal's hand closed on his shoulder, on the arm where he grasped the ring behind his back.

_The time will come when you will have to make a choice. You will have the power to release her or keep her. Reflect on this, my child. You must be prepared for what lies ahead._

The doors slid open with a hiss, and she turned to walk alone to the bridge, leaving him in silence once again, this time with a thought instead of nothing.

_I have already made my choice._


	14. 14 Red Morrow

14 – Red Morrow

Artanis had been expecting their jump from the far planet-side for almost a day before they final arrived.

The warp gate's plaza was swarmed with troops and while the sight of them soothed his inner soldier, the Praetor knew it was very unlike Zeratul to be so late, much less late at all. His old friend had promised an audience with the UED Captain and had sent her to the Mothership immediately upon arrival, where she waited with the rest of the Prelate's vanguard. Zeratul himself was nowhere to be seen.

Artanis wished for his friend's cloak of darkness to approach her since the last he had spoken to a human in person was when she had fatefully healed him on Braxis, their exchange brief and panicked, and he knew very little of what has transpired after, apart from her poor engagement with Kerrigan. The vanguard stood around her like they would a prisoner instead of an escort and she had a hand curled through the hollow cutout of her rifle butt. Everyone was on edge.

He was careful to keep his thoughts close. _What is going on here?_

He waved off his own soldiers when he approached, who fanned out around the bridge with suspicious eyes on the lonely human. She bowed, hand jumping to her ear to catch her visor.

"Praetor Artanis." A physical voice made his mind throb. "I hope you are… uh… well, give the circumstances."

He swept her his finest. "_As I, you, young warrior. Where is your superior?_"

Her eyes were a strange color for humans and he lost the first part of her sentence in them. "…though he sends his regards. He promised to join you for briefing. I am here to discuss the Zerg you are fighting, I have some experience in neutralizing cerebrates."

"_We slew the cerebrates nestled at the Temple's grounds long ago, when the Matriarch first ordered the crystals reunited—"_

"Then the cerebrates are surely in the process of rebirth. Have you picked up any of their signatures on thermal or psionic scans?"

Her audacity was new, the bravery still the same. He reigned in his manners. "_No, young one. But if you believe they are attempting to return, we shall order a re-sweep that you may oversee._"

He could see her back straighten and her thoughts thicken about her head. She wet her lips, words suddenly careful. "I would advise speed over planning, Praetor," she replied. "Killing a cerebrate is ugly business. Holding against them is… well, easier isn't the best word, but it'll do. Optimal, maybe. Less loss of life, I would say, and if re-activating the Temple guarantees a full purge, a siege would do just as much as neutralization."

"_A wise judgment, Starling. Though as talented as you are, I regret I am most interested in speaking with you once our engagement with the Zerg is over."_

The color drained out of her face and her knuckles twitched on her rifle. "About what happened on Braxis? The informant?"

_A chord ill-struck, Artanis, _he was careful to think to himself. _There is a wound here._

"_As a sworn officer of Prelate Zeratul, it would be most helpful of you to disclose in full what transpired there. For your safety and ours, as much as you may not believe the first. Zeratul went to great lengths on a suspicion your former brothers would betray you and had he guessed wrong, all of us would be much worse off._"

Her expression hadn't changed. He felt his own claws clinking together as he squeezed them behind his back for strength. "_You have proved your loyalty to him. I do not doubt this will reward you._"

She was staring over his shoulder and her eyes snapped back to his when the sound of the bridge doors closing echoed behind him. He turned, both hoping and knowing who it was.

The Prelate bowed once Artanis turned to face him. "_Praetor, Adun has answered my prayers. We come to battle this hour."_

The cloud of thought vibrating behind him was suddenly very heavy, but Artanis swept another bow to the old Dark Templar. "_En Taro Tassadar, my friend. Adun has answered mine with you._"

Zeratul moved like shadows, smooth and shapeless, each step seeming different from the last as he rose to the comsat rig, armor gleaming. Starling saluted with the rest of his vanguard, who fell into place behind him as he breezed past his Captain to boot up one of the communication screens.

"_We should begin the briefing immediately. We cannot know if Kerrigan herself waits to strike amongst broods here._"

"She isn't here," Starling squeaked, hand coming down from her forehead. Zeratul turned a moment to glare at her, and she swallowed. "She wouldn't risk coming this close to so many Dark Templar without the Swarm behind her."

"_Thank you for your insight, Captain. You may retire to the marshal grounds for further orders."_

One of his vanguard stepped forward to escort her out, and she followed without even a meek second glance, disappearing through the bay doors with her thunderstorm of thought. Artanis couldn't help crossing his claws.

_Do I sense tension between you and your… Captain, is it again?_

_She serves because she has nowhere else to go. I am mindful of this when true loyalty is needed, especially when discussing secrets._ Zeratul paused as the screen opened a connection to Talematros, the city's sigil blinking in wait. _Her skills will be useful in the coming battle, but not her presence. It has troubled her enough already._

_So Raynor was right then—she was a consort to the Vice-Admiral?_

The old Protoss stood upright, facing the screen, the shine off his pauldrons contrasting the darkness of his robes. It was a long while before he spoke.

_She saw him die. I cannot say what more she knew of him._

_Zeratul, surely you must know the truth about—_

His head had turned in warning, eyes small and fiery, looking more a part of the Dark Templar stories of silent assassins than ever before. _Do not push me, young Templar._

Artanis lifted his palms in surrender. _As you wish, Zeratul. _

A familiar face appeared over his shoulder, her long, sleek tendrils of neural cords cascading from behind her veil, and Zeratul bowed deeply as she spoke.

_My children, the hour of battle has dawned. At long last, we must undo the wrongs of our past and cleanse this land of our betrayer's ilk._

The anger that flared through him as his memories rushed to him made him forget his manners. He buried his fist in his claws. _Kerrigan has masterminded this entire chain of events, and we played right into her hands!_

Zeratul nodded grimly. _Yes we did, Artanis. Yet our course is set nonetheless. Using the Temple's energies against the renegade Zerg may accomplish Kerrigan's aims, but it is still our only chance of survival._

_And survive we will, my warriors_, came Raszagal's fierce reply. _For too long have we labored in futile defense as our enemies push us further and further away from victory. The time has come to let loose the full fury of our powers! Never again shall Shakuras be despoiled by the foul touch of alien species! These Zerg shall be the first to fall before us!_

Zeratul traded looks with Artanis but his calm held. _Matriarch, I have served you for many millennia. I have always valued your wisdom and strength. Yet lately, in your mind…_

He turned again to glance at Artanis, who sensed the concern in his old friend's words. Zeratul crossed his arms in front._ I have sensed something that clouds your true spirit. Though Kerrigan has gone, I wonder if her treachery still remains?_

_Be at ease, Zeratul._ The Matriarch raised her hand, eyes cooling. _I am still the same Raszagal you have always known. These recent events have weighed heavily upon me and I am wearied. But fear not; my warrior spirit will shine before you, and light your path to victory._

_Indeed_, Zeratul hedged, the uncertainty only faintly masked.

Artanis walked beside him to hail his Executor on the partner screen. _The time for action is upon us! The crystals must be taken to the Temple while the Zerg still muster their forces. _He put a hand on the Prelate's shoulder._ I shall carry the Uraj myself, while Zeratul handles the Khalis._

He nodded in reply, his voice quiet and directed this time. _After this has passed, we shall speak. In private._

It was Artanis' turn to nod as the Matriarch gave her orders._ Executor, you shall provide escort for Artanis and Zeratul as they make their way to the Temple. Gods willing, we will channel the energies of the Xel'Naga, and scour this world clean of the Zerg! Go now, my children, and know that the survival of our entire race depends upon your actions!_

* * *

He wanted to rub his hands together in delight – everything was falling so perfectly into place – but that seemed too staunchly human for him, so he settled for a grin that almost split his face in half as he watched the mutalisks hand their payload off to the waiting drones.

Kerrigan had been kept out of this loop for fear of disrupting it; the Queen of Blades had a bad habit of threshing things she didn't understand and she passed judgments so quickly that had she understood what he was doing, she'd have destroyed it anyway. She was so paranoid of anything with the potential to overpower her that she had made a hobby out of nipping would-be challenges in the bud. The breeding expert Abathur had started coming to Duran on the quiet after she wrecked the first few mega-zerg it had been brewing to serve her.

The old Zerg was clicking his teeth and claws together as Duran watched the casket come in. He patted his dear friend on what could possibly be considered a shoulder. "Calm yourself, Abathur. I daresay you might be something other than level-headed… can this be excitement I see dawning on you?"

It settled back into the crevice of the hatchery walls. "_Anticipation for work. A powerful canvas comes to me. Potential indiscernible, must begin immediately._"

Duran laughed, his laryngeal flaps flexing with each peal. "Soon, my friend, soon. He shall be yours once I make sure it is truly our fallen Vice-Admiral."

"_Human strains always weak. Output varies. A tiny soldier, a Queen of Blades. Unpredictable but unprecedented, if strains behave."_

"And you always make them behave, Abathur. This will be good practice for you – when the time comes, you will have another opportunity to create a Queen of all the Queens." He could see Abathur's eyes swell. "The Vice-Admiral is only a beta-test."

"_Redundant,_" it gurgled, claws spinning. "_Stukov greater than prey."_

"He will be a true predator once you finish with him," Duran mused, eyes on the casket the drones were hauling down to the hatchery. "But he will be prey for his lost love, if all goes as planned."

* * *

Zeratul watched the invasion begin with his vanguard at his side, ever mindful of her presence among them. For the first time since the jump, she seemed to be at peace watching the legions march forth from _Void Seeker_'s bridge, her hand slipping from her rifle to fan across the glass. The drums of war were serenely familiar to her.

He hadn't yet returned her helmet, giving her a visor to use instead, knowing she could breathe the air on Shakuras for the time being. The freezing winds of Talematros were a result of Shakuras' long nightly winter, and here, where the Zerg festered and grew, a warm, fertile summer was heralding their arrival.

The Executor had given her the orders for the battle, and his vanguard was to follow her command on the field. The Zerg specialists of her homestead were average warriors amongst the Protoss—nearly every Elect had fought them in their struggle to stay alive. Humans knew little of their blessings.

He held the Khalis in his hands and could feel its gentle vibrations coursing through him, the soft whispers of the Khala replaced with the silence he had always known. She had complained of the noise, and he rued her for it; he hadn't heard those voices since his severance, and he had known them for so long before then. As he had thought, humans knew little of their blessings.

"How long until the grounds are secured?" She was staring through the glass, which fogged when she drew too close.

"_Another hour, perhaps less. Artanis is efficient when his vengeance directs him."_

"Vengeance is strength, not direction. Acumen swings the sword, vengeance makes it hurt. Unchecked, it is fury. Fury destroys you. Vengeance destroys them." She said it so flatly and mindlessly he wondered if she was thinking aloud.

"_Reconstruction still speaks to you, even out here, it seems._"

She let her hands drop back to her sides, pulling her nose off the window. "It gives me _value_."

The word was acid in her sweet voice. He narrowed his eyes. "_Again it shall be tested. Again, you will prove it to yourself true._"

"That's only if I don't die."

"_Do you forget my promise to you, little one?_"

"I'd like to," she countered, but when their eyes connected, she dropped her gaze to the floor. "Maybe that will be tested, too."

"_My brothers will keep you safe while I am within the Temple."_ He waited for Artanis' wave, eyes on the commlink. She was testing his patience with her passive-aggressive jibes. "_You will report to the Executor thereafter._"

She returned her gaze to the battlefield as small mountains of smoke and psi began to bloom across the surface, the Protoss army cutting through the ground forces situated around the Temple. The path they hewed glittered from the armors of a thousand, a vein of silver through the cracked earth. He could feel her thoughts quiet as she stared.

"_I did not think you were the kind to yearn for battle, little one._"

"Stop calling me that," she said, her tone harsh, but softening as she heard how she sounded. "I just want to get back to something I know. Something familiar."

He heard the thought echo so clearly in her mind that it had discernable words—_maybe the battlefield is home._

It warmed his heart to know she liked the fury of battle as much as he did, but when he realized why, he forced himself not to think of it. It would bring him back to the dream, back to all the other things about her that he valued—

_That is where I will lose this. By value without action._

Yet he was paralyzed, watching her, knowing anything he said would be used against him; she had often said battle was the same everywhere, and so were females. The Matriarch's disfavor had taught him that, and he knew better than to try bribing his Captain with words. His kindness would only be construed as attempts to, as she called it, 'protect his asset'.

_There is no action that can prove her wrong, short of letting her die. And I shall not lose integrity by breaking a promise to fix it in her mind. _

She was right there in front of him. He was backed into a corner.

_What does she want?_

"_Prelate Zeratul, we are ready to begin your escort to the Temple,_" the Executor boomed over the commlink, shaking him from his thoughts less violently than Demeter, who had pulled hard enough on her rifle's back-strap to swing it lose.

He nodded to his vanguard and started for _Void Seeker_'s hangar. "_Received. We shall speak again when we break ground._"

Demeter moved with his Dark Templar, her combat whites sparkling amongst the blacks and blues of his brethren. She stopped as soon as she heard his voice.

"_Starling, I request that you remain here._"

His mind was roaring at itself as she turned to face him, her eyes as blank and confused as he was. _The whole point of bringing her into the vanguard was to ensure she saw combat. And now she is to be left behind?_

_She knows I value her warrior spirit. I need to show that I value __**her**__._

She cleared her throat. "Zeratul-"

"_You shall remain on Void Seeker until I return. I cannot guarantee your safety in the wake of the purge - I know only that it will destroy the Zerg, not that it will spare you amongst us." _

"You're leaving me here?"

"_Do you question every order given by superior officer on their way to war, Captain?"_ The invocation of her rank made him sound pompous, but he couldn't take it back now. His heart ached when she made her defiant stand, knees bending and eyes narrowing, the usual way she responded when backed in to a political corner—

"You can't, I swore you an oath—"

"_You swore to obey,_" he replied, careful to keep his retort calm and level, the way a Prelate should reply. "_Obey me and stay here._"

"I swore to _protect_ you," she spat. "I am a member of your vanguard, you can't take the rest and leave me—"

"_And I swore you an oath in return, as your superior_," he vented. "_I swore the same, the oath to protect, and my rank gives mine precedence_." He narrowed his eyes and forced himself to look angry. "_Your bravery gives way to insolence so quickly. You will report to the captain at the helm until I return, and if I am forced to teach you a lesson in obedience to ensure your cooperation, you had best pray it shall not delay my arrival afield."_

Her mouth hung open in stunned silence, her eyebrows relaxing against her forehead as the words crashed over her. After a moment, she seemed to marshal her wits and she straightened, face blank. "Yes, Prelate."

He caught her pointed thought as it whizzed out of her head. _I will remember this._

He relished the expression of surprise on her face when he echoed in reply: _Good._

He turned and pulled the shadows about him, watching his brothers fade from the light at his lead, leaving her standing alone in the viewing chamber, head heavy against his chest.


	15. 15 Tremors

**15 – Tremors**

Demeter was somewhere between anger, relief, fear, and pride when she finally had the presence of mind to move herself from the communications deck to the bridge, but the fleet captain's words whizzed right out her head after he had said them that she knew battle was out of the question for her right now. She couldn't admit he was right, because had he admitted her to the field with the rest of his vanguard, she might not be so damn confused.

_This is another test._

_Okay, so how do I pass it?_

She sighed. It wasn't a test. It wasn't a punishment and it wasn't a reward. She had no idea what it was. The viewing glass to the battle below was cold against her head and she pressed it in deeper, feeling the chill spread across her brow. It didn't bring any clarity.

I shouldn't have said what I said to him. She wasn't entirely sure she had meant it but she wanted to show him strength, strength outside of her prowess in war. She couldn't stand to be made into some kind of political trophy again. That wasn't what he was doing, but she had to be sure.

_And now I'm here._

_Without him._

_So I got what I wanted_?

And it sucked. She shouldn't have said it. It made no sense now, looking back on it. My smart mouth is going to get me in trouble.

The Protoss around her barely noticed she was there, running back and forth between screens, the main field map in the middle pulsing in different colors and formations as the fleet commanders marshaled their troops in force. They had the wearied look of those who had done this a thousand times before with the nervous edge of a novice executive. They were not used to running missions without their Prelate or one of his advisors on board.

She knew they wouldn't listen to her and the fleet captain's orders had sounded like a fancy way of saying 'stay here and don't cause trouble', so she pulled her head off the glass, rubbed the fog away, and joined the river of bodies fretting about the bridge. She followed an aide to his post at the comm hub, then another to the psi energy core management team, then another out the door—

_Oops. Should probably stay back in there, but…_

A group of Elect saluted as she walked by and she saw the aide fumble a reply through his armful of beam swords, and she scooped to catch the ones that were on their way to the floor. The nodded at her as she stood. "Thank you, Captain."

"I can help carry these. You lead the way."

He nodded again, and she set off behind him as they threaded their way between the secondary forces, the stream of Protoss all seeming to be marching in the same direction. Her legs had walked this same way many times on her frequent trips to roll call, most recently for a pre-jump summons with the rest of the brigade. Zeratul had personally escorted her here, to the sub-hangar, where an Executor now stood calling marshal from the pulpit, his yellow rank insignia shining against his armor. She almost lost her mark to look at the forces at attention in the bay.

They unloaded their armfuls of swords into one of the weapons carts by an open shuttle just in time for the dispatched Elect to grab them as they boarded. She had to have planned this, she thought, even without herself really knowing. She was about to disobey.

Before the aide could turn around and give her new orders, she slipped behind the shuttle ramp and behind the rows of marching zealots, careful to avoid the runway assistants waving ships out to launch. She needed her arms station which, if her memory was correct, was against the short wall, the one with three sets of stairs.

She dodged all the oncoming traffic, her focus unbreakable despite the stares she was getting, and stuffed her fists into her waiting armlets as soon as she reached her stand of armor. She needed just the gauntlets and shoulder armor, maybe a beam or blaster too, but if she was going to be down amongst the Zerg, she was willing to risk less armor for more movement. The glass cannon defense wasn't usually a non-combatant's thing, but she would need the mobility if she had to run. And she knew that at some point that would happen.

The buckle that clipped her pauldrons together in the back clicked in place loudly and she jumped—the Executor was waiting behind her, hand lowering back into his robes.

"G_oing to battle, Captain_?"

She sighed in relief, reaching around to buckle the rest. "Orders?"

_"I find it difficult to believe your superior did not already give you any_."

"My oath is my order now," she said, not stopping her efforts to dress for war. "You can check the logs for my orders if you don't believe me."

"_Is that a shrewd way of saying you are disobeying our Prelate_?"

"It's a polite way of saying I don't give a fuck," she spat. She pulled her chestplate tight before starting on her boots. "He's down there and I'm up here. He put me in a position where I can't keep my oath without breaking it."

"_And you expect my complicity in your extrajudicial affairs_?"

She sighed and wiggled her last foot into place. "We can play this game all day, Executor. My skills have a short shelf life before they go bad. If you're worried about covering your ass, blame it all on me. Zeratul's used to putting up with my bullshit, he'll believe you."

The Exeuctor laughed. "_A human Raszagal, I could not have guessed. I do not expect he will even ask me_."

"He won't. I'll tell him myself."

_"I will give you command of a section of twelve. Four zealots, four dragoons, and four Dark Templar. Do you have any more forceful request for motions afield_?"

"No, Executor," she said, meekness returning, hopefully evidenced by her reference to rank. "Give me a battalion and I'll keep them alive."

"_Talios Unit. Eight hundred, deployed around the Temple's only entrance. Second off the front line._" The Executor pointed towards the shuttle closest to them, keying in the orders on his glass pad. "_Your section awaits. Do us all a favor to keep me in the Prelate's good graces, Captain_…"

She turned just as he did, gliding away through the din of the hangar bay—

"_Stay alive_."

* * *

Jim liked dirt. He had always liked it. You sort of had to, when your face ended up in it as much as his did.

This particular dirt was pretty great. Nice loam, not too acidic, dark enough for him to not be able to tell the difference between it and his closed eyes, for starters. He bet he could grow a whole pumpkin in this stuff.

The back of his neck was on fire but at least the dirt keep his face cool. He wanted to inhale it, drink up the smell of the earth, but his lungs had stopped obeying him, and he shrugged. That shrug seemed to push him a centimeter up, and suddenly his eyes crackled like eggs under a tractor, vision filled with a light so bright he thought he might throw up.

His neck burned again, this time from the front as his shirt drew taut against his chest, and he slid out of the soil, slowly but surely, and vaguely remembered how badly the pain all over him compelled him to seek out the dirt again.

"Jim, JIM…"

He sighed to himself. Not this again…

"JIM, _JIIIIIM_—"

Something cracked against his cheek. He squinted, but it wasn't any use.

"His face is moving—jolt, stack—Jim, JIM!"

He forced his eyes apart, mind feeling around his own body for control of his hands. He heard his own voice and it sounded just as far away as the first one.

"No… jolt… no jolt… don't…"

But it came anyway, and it almost dulled the current pain he was in by comparison, and it did flush sensation into the rest of his body, hands now back in his control, and he balled one into a fist and swing wildly. It connected with something, and he kept on blinking until he could see what it was.

His field marshal was standing over him, hand on his nose, blood trails coursing all over his face. A medic had pinned his hands back down.

"Lift his head, get the backboard under—"

"What the fuck is going on—"

His field marshal sounded like a distant elephant. "Fuck yuh, man. She jolteh yuh, nah me. Da fuck was dat fuh…"

"What the fuck is going on!"

His hand banged against something and his vision went out again—another bang and it was back.

"Jesus, watch his head—_JIM_!—watch his head, get his arms—"

"WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON!"

The pain stilled, the voices stilled, and he imagined the dirt was already still. His field marshal's voice came over once more, this time somber enough to understand without hearing the words. "She betrayed ush. Kerrigan. Fenix ith dead. Godda get yuh out ah here, man."

He closed his eyes and wished against for the dirt. The dirt was much more calm and happier than what was going on.

_Someday, Kerrigan, I'm going to bury you in it._

The darkness beyond was even better than the dirt, and he left himself drift in it, content not to think.

* * *

The orders flying over the comsat buzzed in her visor's earpiece hard enough to make the HUD vibrate. She couldn't switch it off. She could only gaze down at the carnage below.

"_The Prelate and Praetor are in position-prepare seige defenses-"_

_"Zerg engagements in process, hold the field, hold the field-"_

_"Ultralisk in northern quadrant, inbound! Repeat, ultralisk in northern quadrant-_"

She swallowed, throat groaning. The troops couldn't be listening to any of this either, not when there were Zerg in front of them. She looked up to stare around at her section, and gulped -four glittering eyes were gazing back at her.

_Do I give a speech? I'm a shit speaker, but maybe that's what I should do?_

She swallowed once more, mouth getting drier. "Lieutenants. Which of you rank lieutenants?"

Heads turned to exchange glances, but the two of the Dark Templar glided over to her clipped-in position near the starboard shuttle window. They bowed with a simple flourish of their cloaks, and the right one's eyes glowed purple.

_"Captain, I am called Tonidir and my brother is Massotel_," he said, voice like a quiet nightmare. "_We are Primarchs of the Nerazim, sworn in by your very superior, the Blessed Prelate Zeratul_."

Hearing his name made her tremble, with what she couldn't tell. Another swallow. "You know who I am?"

"_We ranked high enough to be present at your oath. We serve alongside you in favour of our Prelate and Matriach_," the one called Massotel echoed in the same eerie tones.

This gulping thing was getting old. She was never this nervous before battle. "Well, for formality's sake, since I know how much you guys like that stuff, I am Captain Demeter Starling, currently operating under orders from the Executor of _Void Seeker_ to attend to Talios unit, stationed at the entrance of-"

The static broke through to her earpiece and she saw the entire section press their own to their heads. "_ULTRALISK THROUGH, ULTRALISK THROUGH AND EN ROUTE TO TALIOS-ULTRALISK THROUGH THE LINES_!"

She almost slammed her face against the window. The beast of a thing had broken the lines, a smoking limb where its left foreclaw used to be, and it was barrelling towards the flight circle the shuttle was on course for, head bobbing with pain and roars as it tracked blood across the plain. The troops near the Temple were scrambling to form a hold line, jumping from turrets and cannons to aid their brothers in setting up a wall of bodies, and the mutalisks swarming overhead, no long held in check by anti-air, were regrouping to strike.

_This is not a good start to the whole staying alive thing..._

But the ultralisk stopped and threw its head back in a fantastic roar, muted through the glass, but even from the sky Demeter could see the sinews in its terrible jaws flutter from the sound, and then it began furiously pawing at the dirt and sand, a cloud of dust turning up from beneath its remaining claw.

_Oh, shit. Not good._

She unclipped her wrist and staggered towards the cockpit. "Land, now!" she yelled, surprised at herself for not sounding shrill. "Put us on the ground!"

The pilot nodded and she barely reached her clip again before the ship shifted in descent, pointing down in a circle towards the surface. She grabbed the closest Primarch-Massotel-by his shoulder armor. "The ultralisk is marking for a deep Nydus. They do that when they're sending a worm from afar and they can't mark it from above."

His eyes widened, purple as amethysts. "_So it is tunneling from a primary Hive cluster_?"

"Yes, and we don't want it to get here," she panted, feet moving beneath her to stabilize on the touchdown. "We gotta kill it, and kill it fast."

Tonidir nodded to his two other comrades, and the four of them faded from sight. "_It shall be done, Captain._"

She unclipped and started down the ramp, presumably after them, calling over her shoulder. "The rest of you, back me up. I want that thing in the dirt so we can take off its other claw."

She put her hand to her microphone plate. "Executor, this is Captain Starling, requesting contact, over."

The signaled to the shuttle Captain to take off again, and the ship left them between the two Protoss armies, the Talios line set and ready to hold. The Executor buzzed in to reply.

"_Yes, Captain_?"

"We have a situation here, sending coords now," she huffed, tapping her noseplate to transmit her geotag. "I need a comm-pipe to Talios' Commander, there's an ultralisk marking a Nydus worm breakpoint about three-hundred yards from their hold line."

He sounded calm and serene, comforting as her commanding officer. "_I will patch you to Judicator Nezatir immediately, stand ready_."

The ultralisk roared, and she couldn't help stopping from the power of it, shaking the earth beneath her boots and vibrating her visor on her face. She pushed it back into place in time to watch it fall to the ground, its throat and two back legs open and gushing purple and pink blood onto the cracked plains. The four Dark Templar materialized around it, sheathing their blades.

"_Captain, I am here,_" a new voice echoed through her earpiece. She snapped her hand back to her mic-plate.

"Judicator, the situation has been handled, ultralisk down. We will be joining your troops at the hold line."

_"Fine work, Captain. Please report to me directly once you arrive_."

"Understood. En route now."

Massotel and Tonidir approached her silently, their cloaks turning in the breeze, and they flanked her as she directed their section towards the spread in the hold line. "_A good call, Captain. Very few gain an opportunity to learn from the Zerg. Most do not see past their first engagement_."

She felt herself smiling. "Thanks. It's a lot easier with Dark Templar around. You live and learn and then get invisible assassins, it seems." She stopped to turn and look back at the dead ultralisk. "Why is the ground still shaking?"

"_I assure you it is dead, Captain_-"

"That's not what I'm asking... oh God," she said, voice trembling now. She could hear the voice of Reconstruction chiding her faintly for being an unconfident leader but she could also feel her knees chatting together as the rumbling got louder and louder and louder-

"RUN!" she screamed, and as her section blew past her towards Talios, she caught Tonidir's cloak in her fist, pulling him down to her face. His eyes were wide, but not with panic. They never were.

"The worm is en route, it's below us now," she panted, fingers trembling as she released him. "Its looking for the ultralisks' hole, we need to kill it as soon as it surfaces."

He nodded, and they took off at a sprint for the ultralisk's corpse; she could feel her legs burning, which meant she wasn't panicking, but her knuckles were so white from being balled in the tightest fists that she forced herself to open them into flat palms to convince herself that she wasn't really panicking.

_I'm panicking._

As soon as they reached the dead Zerg, she pulled the claw out of its mouth by the sinews and held it down with one foot. It was as long as she was tall, but the bone was hollow to make it easier for the creature to swing. She motioned to Tonidir for his blade. "Cut it off. Go a foot up from the flesh, that's where the bone should be weakest."

"_Why do we need it, Captain? I have a warp blade, and you a rifle_."

"When the worm comes up, we'll use it to sew its mouth shut," she said, stepping away for him to cut. "Like a pin through cloth-"

A column of pink, purple, and red burst out of the ground forty yards off, where she had once stood with her section, the Elect flying through the air with the debris from the ground, and a gross, guttural groan echoed through the valley as the worm devoured the unlucky soldiers who hadn't been thrown from its maw before clanging back down into the hold lines replaced their waiting gap with new soldiers and the turrets, now re-staffed, lit up as they tried to hammer the thing back into the earth. It did little more than make it scream louder.

She felt Tonidir cut the claw from the corpse but she could only stand and look, watching as the four remaining soldiers in her section clamoured to get behind the lines, the bodies of the three who sustained the fall lying still in the dust.

_I am fucking this up so badly._

"_Captain, we must move_."

"It must have followed their foot vibrations," she mused, eyes counting the dead soldiers. "I should have known it wasn't looking for a hole, it was looking for vibrations..."

"_We must move quickly, Captain Starling_!"

"I am fucking this up so badly," she repeated aloud, and Tonidir shook her, the hands on her shoulders cool and firm.

"_We cannot stay exposed like this, we must move_!"

She snapped to. Reconstruction was screaming in her head. _Focus is strength, Strength is wisdom. Wisdom is power. Power is death. Death is focus. This circle must be complete. If you do not focus, your enemy will bring you death. Focus. Focus!_

"Focus," she repeated, pulling the claw from the gaping mouth of the dead creature, and hauling it over her shoulder to strap it to her rifle. Focus.

She took off after the Dark Templar, feeling the tip of the claw drag on the ground, but kept her eyes on the worm, now throwing up zerglings and hydralisks less than a few yards from the front lines of Talios' array of shields and pikes. She couldn't draw her rifle, now sandwiched between her back and the dead ultralisk's forelimb, but she ran faster without something in her hands anyways. She put her hand to her visor, calling to the Judicator.

"Judicator, come in, need you to clear me a way to the worm-"

The Executor's voice was unexpected. "_We have you on watch from above, Captain. Stand clear for a blue drop_."

The lines had broken as the Protoss met the Zerg pouring out of the worm in force, now that the Nydus canal had the chance to vomit an entire army into the clearing. She slowed her sprint as Tonidir once again disappeared, and she wondered if 'blue drop' meant a nuke rinse. She couldn't stand clear for that.

"How long until the purge?"

"_Ten minutes. Hold your position, Captain_."

The zerglings closest to her exploded in a ball of blue light and she froze in her run, shading her eyes to find where that had come from. Scout ships were circling overhead, and in the distant sky she could see _Void Seeker_ hidden in the clouds. The Executor was really serious about her not dying.

It was little comfort, as one of the creatures closest to her snarled and bounded towards her, but its ventral carapace opened from throat to belly, the air around it shimmering like a mirage. She would have smiled if she had been less tired, less panicked. She jumped back into a run again, pulling the claw off her back and aiming it like a lance-

-and speared the half-burnt worm right through the outer lip, rattling to a stop as her momentum died from the force of the blow, the wind rolling out of her as she crashed to the ground, now spreading with creep. She coughed, stars winking everywhere.

_Focus, damn you, focus!_

She put herself back on her feet before she had any real sense of where they were, and when her vision came to, she wrapped her arms around the claw, now flailing with the injured worm who had stopped its stream of soldiers into the valley, and pushed as hard as her strength would allow. It slid slowly at first, then she felt cold, steel arms around her, winds whipping at her feet, with a chilly, calm voice in her ear.

_Push, Captain, with everything you have._

She obeyed, feeling Tonidir's arms flex against hers as they drove the claw through the other flap of flesh on the opposite side until she turned in his grip, voice threading and heavy.

"Point it down, in the dirt! We need leverage, then cut the tendon-"

Another shove, then another, and the claw was disappearing through the side of the worm as the sounds of battle raged around them, none seeming to notice what was happening or if the tide was thinning or the hydralisk jumping from beyond-

It crashed into her when Tonidir released her to push the claw further down, the weight of a small car missing her as it flipped to miss the ground, teeth raking her shoulder. She felt the air leave her again when her back hit the dirt but she could see its eyes, now frenzied with the taste of blood, glitter as it jumped back on top of her. She rolled out just in time for it to stab its foreclaws into the ground, burying them in the earth where she was laying not seconds before.

She hopped to her feet, drawing her rifle, and stamped on the closest claw, driving it down deeper, watching the thing scream and struggle to free itself, those hateful, hungry eyes ever focused on her-

_FOCUS._

She aimed and fired, and it slumped over itself, mouth hung open in defeat, a smoking hole where its eyes once were. Tonidir was struggling against the thrashing worm, and she put a few rounds into its side to make her feel better, knowing the worm felt them more as friendly scratches. It screamed nonetheless.

"The tendon is blue, dorsal side, just a little more-"

She rushed to help him, putting her back against it and leveraging her feet in the push, until the small sliver of blue muscle popped up from the ground. Tonidir's blade flashed, and before she realized he had cut it, the worm snapped back into the hole, caught by the claw for a single moment, before it snapped in two and the whole mess clanged back through the tunnel with a groan that made her head hurt. Tonidir caught her arm before she would have fallen into the now empty hole.

His eyes burned, violet but just as strong. "_Watch your back, Captain_-"

Another set of eyes, these yellow and black, appeared over his shoulder as a long, bony claw erupted out of his chest. The purple in his eyes faded, as did he, the invisibility wrapping around him a second too late. The hydralisk behind him snarled with delight, the second claw crossing the first, and the Dark Templar reappeared in pieces at her feet.

"NO!" She jammed her rifle to her shoulder and unloaded the rest of her clip, the pair of them sliding to the dirt, bleeding a mix of red and blue, as she swayed there for a moment, finger clicking down on her empty gun's trigger. "No..."

More flashes of bloody bones appeared around her, the groans and whines of frenzied Zerg filling her ears, and she ducked as one jumped for her, the zergling connecting with her ribs for a brief moment, tearing her chest plate loose. She sprinted over the hole without thinking, clutching her armor in place.

Her foot caught and she felt something warm spread from her knee, the fabric on her leg suddenly much looser across her thigh and pushed herself over on to her back, rifle swinging wildly. It hit the zergling in the face, not hard enough to throw him off, but enough to make his neck snap, and the body crashed down on her, claws sticking astride her head. Its dead mouth banged against her forehead, and she pulled her legs up to kick it off, instead feeling something push back.

A hydralisk was digging through its fallen brother's back, claws cutting at the carapace furiously as it tried to get to its prize beneath, and when she pressed her feet against the zergling's stomach, she saw a claw poke through, followed by another infernal scream for food.

_OH GOD._

She had lost track of her rifle but she didn't care. She needed to get on her feet to run, but before she could tangle the hydralisk in the zergling's corpse any further, their eyes connected for a brief moment, and she watched the yellow, beady things fill with blue, like an ocean pouring into them, and then it all went black.

* * *

Zeratul found her as she had fallen when the purge hit, buried in flesh and ash, torn at the ankle and side in a pool of her own blood.

"_Talios could not have sustained a full Nydus drop_," Judicator Nezatir. "_We owe her our lives._"

He held up a hand to silence him and pushed the two skeletons off of her, and felt a storm of relief wash over him when she coughed, chest jerking back to life with the rhythm of her breath.

He pulled her into his arms, scooping her shattered legs up and mindful of her head, a trail of snaking blood running from a wound on her temple. Her eyes were squinting and she was mumbling incoherently, her mind eerily silent.

_Demeter, can you hear me?_

They opened, the gold now ringed in red, and she winced them shut again. "Everything hurts... I lost him, lost Tonidir..."

_Be still, little one, or the pain will not allay-_

She was twitching in his arms, trying to marshal control over her body again but it was only darkening the red spots on her soft armor, the wounds beneath opening again from the stress. He pushed her hair out of her face, pulling strands free from the dried blood on her cheeks.

"Call a med shuttle now, on my orders," he spat to the Judicator, who no doubt had already given the order, seeing as the wind was spinning around them as the shadow of a ship glided over them. She blinked a few times, each a tiny wince.

"Zeratul..."

_I am here, Demeter._

"I did it again," she murmured. Her stare was distant, apologetic. "I disobeyed you."

He tried to keep the anger down, not from her disobedience but from her terrible prioritization given the situation. _We shall speak of this when you have recovered. Now is not the time._

She grabbed his arm, tracking blood across the silver armor. "Maybe I... did good, maybe I saved some lives, but..." she fought the cough and won. "I'm not a soldier, just a medic. I made bad decisions. This is why you didn't want me out here."

He stood, cradling her head in the crook of his elbow and she coughed blood and spit onto her mangled chestplate, eyes clouding in confusion when she felt the soft rumble of his laughter.

_No, little one, I had my own reasons for trying to keep you from this place. When you are well again, I will teach you._

She put her head on his shoulder when exhaustion took her again, and he could faintly hear the sounds of speech leave her when he stepped aboard the shuttle-

"Hoo-rah..."

* * *

a/n - thank you so much for your reviews, they mean more than you know. i will be working on this story more often now that my stressful relocation is over :)


	16. 16 - Calm Before The Storm

16 – Calm Before The Storm

Kerrigan resisted every shred of instinct compelling her to rip Duran to shreds for what he just said.

"My Queen, I assure you, he will do no harm to her—"

She bit her tongue, she balled her fists, then released both, taking a deep breath to make the fuzzy edges around her vision go away.

"He is _not_ going to experiment on her, he will only oversee the Infestation—"

She was chanting to herself in her mind. Or maybe that was a different voice, but it wasn't doing a terrific job of holding her in check.

"I assure you she is safe, my Queen, he is under my orders—"

She slammed her fist flat on his chest, relishing the feeling of him flying a few feet into the nearest wall.

"That is the problem, Duran, you gave her to a known tinkerer _under your orders_," she screamed. "It is you who will be held responsible, after you fetch her from the evolution pit and bring her to me. I will finish the Infestation myself, now that I know my trust in you was poorly placed."

She purred to her hydralisks. "Fetch the Matriarch from Abathur. If he resists, kill him." She fixed her eyes on a horrified Duran. "You had best hope she has not been changed. You will regret that to your very last breath, however short that may be."

"My Queen, I meant only to serve, only to serve you—"

"You will serve as a paltry meal if Raszagal doesn't appear as she did when you took her," she spat back, watching him flinch like a scared dog. "You are becoming reckless, drunk with power. _I_ gave you that power, Duran. And you are forgetting."

She flashed her claws. "Perhaps you need reminding."

* * *

Her wounds were superficial, he'd been assured, but the memory of her broken legs and ribs was still fresh in his mind. It hadn't been the first time he'd pulled her from death and it wouldn't be the last, that much was clear. His little Captain was making a name for herself.

She could take a beating, something he flinched to think about, but it was commendable what she would put herself through on the field. Few walked as tall through thick and thin, and these parts put her in deeper than ever before. She prevailed, as expected. She had always needed room for wings.

He hadn't seen her conscious in days, and he wondered at the stress on her mind from the pain of healing, her legs set and mending as she rattled out thin breaths through her chest bindings. The tubes down her throat trembled with each effort, lines stable on the monitors around her. She hadn't colicked this time and she wouldn't, he knew, as she was too weak to even breathe on her own.

But she was vibrating with psi, both from her suspension in the medical bay's insulated table and the remnant energies from the purge which seemed to have filled her with the emissions she was issuing now, a beacon of light in the mental darkness around him. He hadn't noticed how strong it was until he stood over her again, feeling her heartbeat thrum through the air.

Her mind was somewhere in the heat wave of thought, but it was elusive as her consciousness tossed and turned in rest. He could feel them dancing in the distance.

He debated allowing her to sleep, or reaching her within the dream. He waited patiently.

She winced in sleep, birds of thought fluttering. He watched.

_Demeter._

Another wince. Wings through the smoke of sleep.

_Demeter, you are safe here._

He waited. Waited for anything, a crow or a whisper.

Silence, deep, deep silence.

_Zeratul. Am I dead?_

Her voice echoed just as beautifully in his head as he had remembered. _No, little Captain. But I fear one day you shall not be so lucky._

_ Not with you,_ she hummed through the dream, pipes in her throat hazing with breath. _You promised. I remember._

_And you believe it?_

_ Am I breathing?_

He paused at her instantaneous reply, her snarkiness from beyond the dream making him calm with pleasure. _You shall not die this day, Demeter, nor any other day should you try to. I am glad to see you complicit in that regard._

_However…_

_ However, your recent actions considered,_ he countered, wondering if this was the right time. _I believe we shall need to reevaluate your duties in my service._

_ More work?_

_ No. A promise in return for mine._

Her head twitched, heart racing. _You mean… not to let you die? Of course—_

_ That you will try and put me into less and less of these operations to steal you from death, to assuage my own personal and political assertions on the matter. It will become an abuse of power if you do not trust me with it. _

_ Zeratul, I've always trusted you, but I go with my gut and I'm sorry that it puts me on the line, but it's my job—_

_ Your job is to obey orders I give you, _he replied, calming the fire in his voice as he heard his own tone. _I can be the leader you need. You must trust me with that power._

_I already have._

He focused his vision, mind spinning through hers, until he could see with his eyes again, cast down at her head, crowned in beeping monitors. Her eyes were open in tiny slits, pupils dilated, glancing at him with their playful twinkle. He released his fists, shoulders relaxing as he knelt to see her face.

_Zeratul, I trusted you since the beginning, and I'm here for you, hell or high water. I can do just high water from now on, if that makes you happy. _

She blinked through the fading hues of bloodshot eyes, pipes fogging and lines darting as the signals of her conscious mind reached the waiting ears of the medical aides. He pulled himself back to heel, shadows spinning at his feet.

_We will speak when you are well, little one._

And her eyes shut in wince as she helped the attendant cough up her pipes, head twitching violently after it was captured. He could see the tears streaming on her cheeks and heard the sinews in her chest creak as they tightened against the bandages. He excused himself from the room as the table descended into chaos.

He took the long walk to the bridge. He couldn't jump with her in this condition and it would be a long three weeks at full steam without a resupply. He needed to think, and his mind was gone, gone with her, down in that sterile medical station, wondering how long it would be to heal, if there was any permanent damage, what treatment regime to follow—not at the task at hand, of returning to Talematros to report to his Matriarch. He shook his head.

_Raszagal will want a word of our success and return, unless Artanis' motions have not already informed her._

He remembered seeing her body at the foot of a gigantic nydus worm choking on itself and feeling some sort of mixed emotion between fear and pride, wondering why it was _her_ all the way out here after he had given her orders to stay in the air. He should have been more specific.

She had been washed in a wave of psionic energy strong enough to kill several armies of alien zerg while bleeding from the foot, leg, arm, and chest. She was putting him through his paces in her hurry to die. But now she was simply streaming that energy around her like some kind of psychic tornado when that much probably should have killed her. He had a good reason to want her in the air.

When the thought, _maybe Stukov and Duran were right,_ crossed him he shook his head again, raining stray theories from his mind. Demeter was their token to greatness, to be thrown aside like a tool when the job was done and they alone stood victorious. He just couldn't see it—how someone could just be let go like this, on crackpot super soldier beliefs. How someone becomes a thing, and gets marshaled in line with the rest of the guns. How someone like her gets caught up in the gears of this machine because she got the longest genetic straw.

But she was steel within too—rubbed out and cooled until all the little cracks were gone, hardened from battle yet taken bed with a superior, the constant plunge of the freezing cold of command before back to the oven to bake in his presence, over and over until she found out how trapped she really was. In the end, Stukov had never known she was yet to become what he feared, the same thing Jim Raynor had broken himself over recently—her own woman.

_They all want control_, she had said to him once. _They all want control over something. Over units, over land, over moons, over people. They want to control everything._

_And they cannot._

_ But they will try._

Stukov had tried, tried so very hard to make her his own, hoping she would be his Kerrigan, his fabulous secret weapon to use against the world and when she started breaking out of his spell, he lost his mind and control. It cost him his life, but she was right. He did try.

_And then fate delivered her to me._

He had no part in this cycle of control schemes. It was all the play of panicking men, lost in a power beyond their insight and she had been set free of it.

_Fate pulls us many ways, some we cannot know._

He drew himself up, claws curling in fists. These thoughts were beginning to choke him. He tapped his way through the layers of screens until hitting Demeter's log prompted him for a passcode. He swiped his in impatiently.

The moment it took to load was agony.

Finally it loaded with her picture, rank, and coordinates, and he swiped over to her medical records, eyes waiting for the first item to load.

A moment again, then…

_Stable. Breathing on own, sitting upright to take water. 2 nosebleeds._

He relaxed, scales clicking, and slid his claws back to his sides. Taking water meant she was doing much better than expected for being three days out of battle. She was weathering a few too many storms.

A green message icon with the royal seal emblazoned upon it blossomed in the corner of his screen.

It was a message from Talematros.

* * *

It was a best a cold blur in her head, a blur between feeling hungry, then stuffed, then tired, then aching from being tired, all in a rotating horror of emotion ever since she'd been down. This one was up there with the worst, but she'd walk again, maybe not very fast, but the psionic lights were doing wonders to the tissue regeneration on her legs and chest but nothing they gave her seemed to dull the pain. She just put her head down and accepted it until she was so tired that she slept through it.

It was over one time, after one last return to the cold.

The pain was only bad when she rolled too far or got an arm in the way and she could hear her breath in her chest. Her lips were dry and her hair had been braided for sleep, twisting up the back of her head to pile on top, still crisp from her rigid sleep.

She tried to focus, eyes coming back slowly but at least they were a single part of her that didn't hurt as her fuzzy vision sharpened with every blink. She had been draped in a thin, glittering blanket of some strange, satin-like fabric and she could see the outline of her straight-leg cast where the zergling had got her, and the memory rushed back like the blood to her head when she sat up, and realized where she was.

_The zergling… the hydralisk… _

She was in Zeratul's private bedroom aboard Void Seeker, where the stars passed her by in slow dots of light, planet whirling beneath.

_Safe, on the ship…_

It worked. She almost blew her part on timing too, but the purge had worked, and the zerg were dead and the Dark Templar had regrouped to race away, off to the other side of the planet perhaps, who cares. She was alive.

But why was she here?

If it was for punishment, she had the woes every Captain took on with the mantle of command: she would have to answer for the dead. She would also have to answer for her disobedience, but the loss of life weighed upon her more than a slap on the wrist from her superior. She could answer for that too, in a way.

She saw her helmet on a bench between the two biggest windows to space, her old UED lasered insignia almost rubbed off from abuse. Her headset was beside it, the glass spider-webbed and bloody with wires sticking out of one earpiece. The juxtaposition of her old self against the new, each one different yet just as worn… she had said it before, battle was battle. That hadn't changed. But maybe she had.

She strained to wonder again why she was here, in his room, staring at her old helmet and new visor, and it dawned on her that maybe those symbols were not accidentally placed—perhaps Zeratul had wanted her to arrive at just that thought, that she wasn't who she used to be.

She turned her wrist over, seeing her serial number still tattooed in place on her underarm, black zeroes stringing though the gap in her bandages. She looked back at the bench, where it was also emblazoned on her helmet, just above her rank badge—or where it would have been had the paint not chipped—and sighed. _I was always a number first back home. A number with a rank._

She could feel the thought complete itself. _Here, I'm a person with a rank. _

She wrinkled her nose at the cliché nature of it all, both the thought itself and this not-to-subtle set-up to bring her to it.

It was true, though. She swallowed when she remembered the last adjutant on Braxis during her defection read her profile back to her: _Biometrics captured… Height, five foot 8 inches—95th percentile for Starling class, 80th percentile overall… Weight, one hundred twenty-nine pounds with seven-point-nine percent body fat—99th percentile for Starling class, 90th percentile overall… Eye color, brown… Hair color, blonde… Body marks, blemish under the left eye._

"I have gold eyes," she said to herself softly. She saw them every morning in the barracks bathroom mirrors, in the glass on Zeratul's room, in her profile picture on her Templar security clearance token. They were gold, not brown. And it wasn't a blemish, it was a beauty mark… she wasn't quite sure that she hadn't brainwashed herself into thinking that. But her eyes were definitely gold.

It hadn't occurred to her before that the readout was ridiculous in its objectification. The first time she heard it, she had been disappointed in how her breeding class stacked up against the newer, better soldiers and never noticed that the UED had crunched her down to a bunch of stats attached to a serial number. Now, it seemed to sting.

_A number with a rank, just measurements of the boots I was filling…_

Before she let herself be angry or sad about any of this, she reigned herself back in. It would be stupid and weak to expect the UED would try to mother each and every one of them. She had been a gear in their beautiful machine—while she didn't appreciate feeling that way any more, she remembered how it felt to stand next to her platoon to receive their honors before the Admiral, and she could feel herself smiling again. She had needed that at first, needed to see how even the smallest part adds value to the whole, needed to be directed before she could learn to direct herself.

When she tried to sit up, something across her chest went taut and her entire body from the hips down burned with fresh pain, and she flopped softly back into the sheets with a wince. This was another reminder, circling back to her disobedience. Had she followed her orders, a handful of Dark Templar would still be alive, and she wouldn't be in Zeratul's bed with a straight-leg cast and holes in her side. She sighed, hearing the creak come back in her lungs.

Her visor gleamed at this angle, the shine of the mostly-together lens glittering in the starlight, and she rubbed her eyes with another sigh. _A helmet, broken for disobedience. Now a visor too. _

One more sigh. _I am fucking this up completely._

She reached down through the gossamer sheet to feel the brace on her leg, but her ribs were not forgiving with the bend. She winced and rolled her head to one side, biting her tongue to distract her from the pain below.

She had turned just in time to spot him slipping silently into the room, coming in through the foyer door in plain brown and silver soft armors. She could feel another smile, but it faded—he was in armor, the ones he wore to air marshals, and the silence of his presence felt… empty. Usually she could feel him coming from a mile away, like an approaching storm. Now it was… this. Cold, armored silence.

When she went to get up on her elbows, the pain stopped her again, but his didn't slow his pace. He pulled all of his swords and knives out of their hiding spots in his leathers and placed them on the table near the door, swiping a claw across the lock pad to shut it firmly when he was done. The door hissed a moment before the bars upon it turned red. When he removed his warp blade and walked to set it on the bench, he paused, head pointed down at what was already there.

She could feel the wind of thought stir around him again for a moment and her heartbeat pulsed in her ears. _He hasn't seen them before. Huh._

He lingered only seconds longer before he put his blade with the rest of his weapons on the entrance table and turned to face her. The smile had melted long ago but she summoned a one in a weak, flashy twitch of her lips, and he started towards the bed.

She tried to use her good leg to move her cast towards the middle but her limbs all froze at once and she was surprised at how easily she relaxed into this, when he stopped her from moving. He seated himself on the edge of his bed, back to her now, and crossed his claws together over his knees. A weird thought flew through her head.

_Am I invisible…?_

_No, Demeter._

She tried moving her arm, and it worked this time. "Zeratul? Are you okay?"

He turned with a start when she touched his elbow, neural crest jolting. _I am, given that you are safe._ His shoulders sagged another inch. _It is a blessing I count too late._

This was weird. Demeter strained her head on the pillow to see his face but he was looking down in his lap, palms open. "I don't understand. I'm not dead, not yet at least—"

_And you shall not_, he countered, head turning sharply to scold her. His eyes were a strange foggy olive green. _Not while you are sworn to me._

"That I understand," she said, careful to speak the words slowly. "I told you as much when we… I don't know, dream-talked? In the med bay?"

_I recall._

"Why am I here, Prelate?"

He stared at her for a moment, eyes impossible to track or decipher, then turned away again. It was a long moment before he spoke, but she knew better than to open her mouth.

_I had to be sure you were safe._

She reached for his elbow again, and he didn't jerk it away this time. His scales were cold but dry. "Zeratul, I'm right here…"

_I know_, he replied. His voice was weak, even in her head. _But I had to be sure._

"Why?"

_The Matriarch has been taken._

"What—"

No way.

There wasn't even enough room in her head to work that out. Taken? When? Where? Why? And who in the universe could possibly have the power to—

Oh my God, she thought.

She focused on him again but he was still, a stone in the darkness, but when he spoke this time, she could hear the anger underneath.

_Kerrigan's treachery has reached us where we once thought ourselves impregnable. I do not know what her plans are, but I fear you may have been right long ago, little one. I cannot suffer the risk of her taking you as well. _

Demeter shook her head, hair tangling on the sheets. "If she can take the Matriach, she could have easily gotten me—"

_She took the Matriarch when I was not there to defy her. She will take you too if I do the same._

It occurred to Demeter that there was only a slim chance of the Matriarch returning from Kerrigan's clutches alive and well if the Queen of Blades had the power to spirit her out from under Talematros' protection. His shoulders were sinking further as he stared into his palms—he wasn't angered to the point of sadness; he was already grieving.

"Zeratul."

She waited for him to turn around once more but he merely rolled his shoulders back up. She tried again. "Zeratul."

He turned this time and she flexed her outstretched hand, casting her eyes between his and her palm. He seemed to ponder it for a while, then threaded his fingers through hers, eyes turning deeply green as an expression of passivity settled on his face. He looked like a scared soldier waiting for an order. She smiled, squeezing his hand.

"We'll find her and get her back. Safe. No matter the cost. I promise"

He squeezed this time. _I cannot ask you to promise that._

"Well, it's a good thing you didn't ask then, because I promise you anyway," she sassed back. She sobered through her grin. "We got this. We're gonna be okay. Just one more mission."

The stars passed behind him through the windowed glass, and she kept her hand against his until sleep took her again.


End file.
